Both app development languages React Native & Flutter have their own pros and cons. But, if you see, Flutter is a clear winner in this app development race.

1. Time to Learn Flutter or Stick to
Native Development?

2. Smartphones technologies are on the rise because it offers far
more than apps, games, and other useful utilities on the go. Due
to the increasing demand for Smartphone apps, nearly every
business wants a mobile app to stay ahead of market
competition. In the previous years, there is a lot for app
developers to do while creating an app for a specific platform,
whether it is Ios, Android, flutter, Blackberry, Symbian, or Java.
Obviously, smartphone manufacturers like Apple and Google have
provided tools to build apps for their platform that requires app
developers to learn different sets of technologies. It was not so
easy for app developers to create and maintain the app for
different platforms. Also, skipping a specific platform or device is
like losing potential app users that direct you in adopting cross-
platform solutions over the traditional native resolution.

3. Nowadays, cross-platform app development solutions are
gaining popularity that allows you to develop apps for more than
one platform using the same code. It saves your time and efforts
as well as lets you build high-quality apps that serve excellent
user experience to your users. While previously building a native
app for a particular device was the only way to ensure optimum
app performance.
So, if you are an app developer and wondering whether you
should Learn Flutter, or Stick to Native Development? Then, this
blog is for you.

4. Introduction:
Flutter is an officially Google powered UI app development kit that
allows the developer to create natively-compiled apps for mobile,
web, and desktop with a single codebase. While React Native is a
framework for building native applications using React Js. The native
was launched back in 2015 by Facebook during F8 Conference and
Flutter is a year baby of Google that was launched last year’s
Google I/O. Apart from that, both the platform is entirely Free and
Open Source. Native uses JavaScript as a codebase while Flutter
uses Google’s very own Dart programming language for faster
Flutter app development for multiple platforms.

5. 1. Community Support:
Thanks to JavaScript, Native can be quickly learned by any
developer with a little bit of training. Same way, Dart syntax is quite
easy for such Java developers as it uses object-oriented concepts or
one can readily learn by following the official documentation. Also,
being an elder language Native has a vast community compared to
one-year-old Flutter. However, Flutter rapidly becomes the first pick
framework for many app developers. Till date, ‘cross-platform’ term
is only related to Android and iOS app development. But, last year
Google has announced that they would take Flutter beyond mobile &
web development. And, they are also planning to target macOS,
Windows, and Linux in the upcoming years.

6. 2. Technical Architecture:
React Native heavily relies on JavaScript runtime environment
architecture, or you can say JavaScript bridge. In runtime, the
JavaScript code is compiled into native code that uses Facebook’s
Flux architecture. However, Flutter has its own Flutter engine that
has everything needed to accomplish the goal of app
development.
Although, components of Flutter are relatively more substantial in
size but it doesn’t require communicating with other native
modules. Apart from that, Dart contains support for multiple
frameworks, like Cupertino and Material Design that comes
preloaded. Native still uses JavaScript to fill the gap with other
native modules which results in poor performance compared to
Flutter.

7. Apart from that, both the platform supports a hot reload feature
that allows the developer to make runtime changes in the app UI
which is quite convenient for the developer.
In terms of the integrated development environment (IDE)
support, Native developers are free to use any text editor but with
Flutter it’s not possible. As Dart is not widely used or popular
language. But at this point, we can’t expect more than this from
one-year-old Flutter because it’s still growing its community and
support.

8. 3. Installation, Setup, and Configuration:
If you know JavaScript, React Native installation is easy else you
need to learn Node Package Manager (NPM) before installing Native.
Also, React Native does not have any setup guide that helps the
developers to get started. At the same time, one can easily install
Flutterby downloading the required binaries for a particular platform
which is readily available on Github. The best part is Flutter
provides built-in CLI tool better known as flutter doctor that guide’s
developer while setting up the environment.

9. 4. Development API and other UI
Components:
While developing cross-platform apps, you must need support
from native components else it won’t feel like native app
development. For React Native, the developer has to rely on
third-party libraries entirely, but it supports UI rendering and
access to device APIs.
But things get comfortable when you are developing an app
using Flutter because it offers a rich set of components and it
does not require any third-party libraries for support.

10. 5. Unit Testing:
For any app, the writing test is an easy way to know app code
performance. Cause React Native uses JavaScript framework; there
is built-in support for some unit level testing. Yet, there is no official
support for integrations or UI level testing. Opposed to react native,
Flutter has support to test developed apps at the unit, widget, and
integration level. It also provides quite proper documentation that
can help app developers to perform Unit testing in no time. Apart
from that, one of the cool features of Flutter is that it offers
excellent widget testing to create widget tests to examine the app
UI and execute along with the unit tests at the same speed.

11. 6. App Store Releasing Process:
One of the crucial parts of app development is to release a
developed app in the Play store. This process includes the
complicated job of code signing to another application setup,
especially when you are developing a cross platform mobile app.
When it comes to Native, it does not provide any documentation or
automated steps to deploy your app to the iPhone App Store. But
one can go through the manual app deployment process from
Xcode. It clearly denotes how the developer has to be dependent
on available third-party libraries while app development and store
release.
But with Flutter, you can use its official documentation that will
help you throughout app development and store release process
including both Android and iOS processes. However, it uses
Fastlane for the app deployment process, which is quite well
documented by Google.

12. 7. Continuous Integration & Delivery
Support:
Things never end by creating an app to fulfill the business needs,
but it starts with it. For any app, Continuous Integration &
Delivery are an essential part of any app development project to
ensure app success by removing the buggy code. For React
Native, there is no official support or documentation for setting up
CI/CD. Flutter does have support for continuous Integration due
to its rich command-line interface and the testing method by
linking external sources.

13. Concluding Thoughts:

14. At the end of the day, both the app development languages React
Native & Flutter have their own pros and cons. But, if you see,
Flutter is a clear winner in this app development race. Because of its
app development flexibility, library support, and other features many
app development companies and its expert app developers are
switching to flutter by considering it worth future proof app
development option.

15. Web & Mobile App Development Company
https://concettolabs.com

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