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What irks me the most is React Native's stability. RN hasn't even reached 1.0 and I have been concerned about the war stories of Udacity[1] and Airbnb[2] moving

What irks me the most is React Native's stability. RN hasn't even reached 1.0 and I have been concerned about the war stories of Udacity[1] and Airbnb[2] moving away from RN. Last time I checked out Flutter a year ago it was in alpha, now it's reached 1.0 perhaps I might give it try... Has anyone with experience in React Native tried out Flutter/Dart be willing to share their experience and challenges? [1] https://engineering.udacity.com/react-native-a-retrospective-from-the-mobile-engineering-team-at-udacity-89975d6a8102?gi=48bcba631a95 https://engineering.udacity.com/react-native-a-retrospective... [2] https://medium.com/airbnb-engineering/sunsetting-react-native-1868ba28e30a https://medium.com/airbnb-engineering/sunsetting-react-nativ...

htkibar 8y ago
There are two things to consider; 1. Version numbers are not that much of an indication to stability. RN is much more battle-tested. 2. Udacity and AirBnB both have been using React Native in a "use the bad parts" fashion. (Specifically, they have been using it with an existing app instead of from scratch). It is not really fair to React Native to be honest. However one thing from Udacity is quite fair, RN is much worse on Android in comparison to iOS. I think giving it a try and having something new in your toolset is a nice idea. However, I doubt Flutter will be "RN is dead long live the new RN". Finally, I really don't trust Google not to axe this project too on a spite. However that might be more personal so keep it out of the equation.
- pvinis 8y ago
  I wanted to write exactly what you wrote, plus this: AirBnB and other similar big companies, can "afford" to let go of react native because they have enough resources to make their own way of working. Specifically AirBnB have their own layout engine. React native is very very good and usable. But trying to integrate it with your own tools is up to you since Facebook and the community don't have access to that private lib that someone might have. That is what make some of these companies drop RN. I think it's important to understand that, and not just keep the title "X dropped RN" and think "oh it must suck then". I've seen many people do that and it's unfair.
- beckler 8y ago
  I doubt they'll kill flutter, and even if they did, it's still going to remain open-source. Plus it looks like it has a number of internal customers, so it just seems unlikely to get axed anytime soon.
- notmainacct 8y ago
  I doubt Google is going to stop development on Flutter anytime soon. Their new Fuchia OS looks like it is made completely with Flutter.
christocracy 8y ago
I’ve been using RN since the beginning. I grokked Flutter / Dart in a couple days in September. The development experience with Flutter is really excellent, I’ve found. Laying out UI is really nice and easy. I really like it.
wkrause 8y ago
I'm in the process of porting a reasonably complex hobby app that I built in RN to Flutter. Things I like better about Flutter: - Cleaner upgrades. For mere mortals like myself, RN can be really painful to upgrade sometimes. This is imho the most frustrating part of working in RN. - Navigation makes sense out of the box in Flutter. react-navigation is getting better, but there has been a lot of churn there and there's still no community consensus on the "right" navigation library for RN. - More opinionated stylized components. It takes a lot less work to get something that looks good using the standard components in Flutter. - Dart is typed (yes I could use TypeScript with RN, but at least when I started building my app in RN, Flow was in some circles the preferred typing system and it took non-trivial effort to get TS working in RN in earlier versions). Things I like better about RN: - I think the debug tools, especially if you're using redux is superior in RN - Greater portability to the web. Yes, the Flutter team is beginning to address this with Hummingbird, but there are many more options with RN - React is still my go-to for building webapps, and even though Dart is quite similar to JS, improvements/maintenance of React skills while working on a mobile app is quite nice.

htkibar 8y ago

There are two things to consider; 1. Version numbers are not that much of an indication to stability. RN is much more battle-tested. 2. Udacity and AirBnB both have been using React Native in a "use the bad parts" fashion. (Specifically, they have been using it with an existing app instead of from scratch). It is not really fair to React Native to be honest. However one thing from Udacity is quite fair, RN is much worse on Android in comparison to iOS. I think giving it a try and having something new in your toolset is a nice idea. However, I doubt Flutter will be "RN is dead long live the new RN". Finally, I really don't trust Google not to axe this project too on a spite. However that might be more personal so keep it out of the equation.

pvinis 8y ago
I wanted to write exactly what you wrote, plus this: AirBnB and other similar big companies, can "afford" to let go of react native because they have enough resources to make their own way of working. Specifically AirBnB have their own layout engine. React native is very very good and usable. But trying to integrate it with your own tools is up to you since Facebook and the community don't have access to that private lib that someone might have. That is what make some of these companies drop RN. I think it's important to understand that, and not just keep the title "X dropped RN" and think "oh it must suck then". I've seen many people do that and it's unfair.
beckler 8y ago
I doubt they'll kill flutter, and even if they did, it's still going to remain open-source. Plus it looks like it has a number of internal customers, so it just seems unlikely to get axed anytime soon.
notmainacct 8y ago
I doubt Google is going to stop development on Flutter anytime soon. Their new Fuchia OS looks like it is made completely with Flutter.

christocracy 8y ago

I’ve been using RN since the beginning. I grokked Flutter / Dart in a couple days in September. The development experience with Flutter is really excellent, I’ve found. Laying out UI is really nice and easy. I really like it.

wkrause 8y ago

I'm in the process of porting a reasonably complex hobby app that I built in RN to Flutter. Things I like better about Flutter: - Cleaner upgrades. For mere mortals like myself, RN can be really painful to upgrade sometimes. This is imho the most frustrating part of working in RN. - Navigation makes sense out of the box in Flutter. react-navigation is getting better, but there has been a lot of churn there and there's still no community consensus on the "right" navigation library for RN. - More opinionated stylized components. It takes a lot less work to get something that looks good using the standard components in Flutter. - Dart is typed (yes I could use TypeScript with RN, but at least when I started building my app in RN, Flow was in some circles the preferred typing system and it took non-trivial effort to get TS working in RN in earlier versions). Things I like better about RN: - I think the debug tools, especially if you're using redux is superior in RN - Greater portability to the web. Yes, the Flutter team is beginning to address this with Hummingbird, but there are many more options with RN - React is still my go-to for building webapps, and even though Dart is quite similar to JS, improvements/maintenance of React skills while working on a mobile app is quite nice.