| Although it seems like a great alternative and competition is always welcome, one of the best points about React Native is that any JS/React/Web developer can go to a React Native project and know what the hell is going on. Even if they don't know exactly what a View is. Flutter would be great if Google didn't have to sell Dart somehow and instead stick with TS/JS. Now you have Flutter developers, not Dart developers because Dart is dead as it was 5 years ago, who can't do either Web nor Native. Not a great selling point there. So, if you're a web developer, you have to learn a new language, framework (whatever Flutter uses) and set of APIs. If you're a native developer, you have to learn, pretty much the same things. And then, you're stuck there. Implementing everything which you can already find on JavaScript and with a knowledge you won't find a job for. This was funny: _Native mobile engineers who are adding a hybrid mobile framework to their tool belt DON’T want to slide back to JavaScript._ Yeah, like learning a whole new set of language and tools, which we cannot reuse for anything else, is going to drive us to the wonders of Dart. _It’s also not only for mobile but for the web as well._ Angular, one of Google most successful projects, uses TypeScript and not Dart, let that sink in. And BTW, Dart is a language, so expect many other Dart-Flutter Frameworks poping up. React Native is based on a framework with lots of traction already and you can just use stuff you're already familiar with like Redux, Underscore and pretty much a whole set of JS libraries already present. Almost every service has a JS library. Now you have to redo the whole thing on Dart? In conclusion, Dart and Flutter is the next smoke cloud and fad to sell on 2018 and will die (or evolve to use TypeScript/JavaScript) on 2019. Edit: I really hope it's the second option because, the other points about RN are true. The documentation is not the best and competition is always a good thing. Edit 2: After the demise of so many projects from Google, I frankly distrust them whenever a new thing comes from them. Edit 3: Now that I think about it, NativeScript already uses Angular and TypeScript, so maybe that's the reason for choosing Dart for Flutter. |
Re "Angular, one of Google most successful projects, uses TypeScript and not Dart, let that sink in.": Google is also promoting AngularDart as well, "Hundreds of Google engineers use AngularDart to build the sophisticated, mission-critical apps that bring in much of Google’s revenue." https://webdev.dartlang.org/angular/
"Demise of so many projects from Google" I agree with (sans the popularity of Go).
Flutter is in alpha so time will tell if Google will put enough funding/focus into it.