Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by k__ 2332 days ago
Flutter and React-Native are different directions, I think.

For higly customized UIs (think Ableton Live, Photoshop, Excel, etc.), I'd say use Flutter, because of the non-native rendering, it will look the same everywhere. Otherwise use React-Native.

2 comments

Exactly this. They are very different systems.

Flutter renders onto a "canvas" and has a completely custom implementation of "native-like" views for each platform. They need to reimplement everything about platform views from scratch.

React Native lets the native OS render actual native views, but lays them out and controls their properties using Javascript. You get the native behaviours "for free", but you do sometimes end up in the lowest common denominator position.

Yes. The common denominator isn't as low as one might expect. I'd guess at least 90% of all apps could be easily done with React-Native.
Sure. But what if the entire world doesn’t want to learn JavaScript? What if you don’t already know HTML, CSS, and JS? RN makes ZERO sense at that point.

As a C developer, man, Flutter looks pretty damn logical!

If it makes more sense, then go for it.

With all of these platform abstractions you just need to understand the trade-offs they're making.

I don't know if you read your own link or not, but he's first off complaining about a community plugin and not an official one.

There is some truth that overlapping isn't well supported in Flutter CURRENTLY, but I can think of things that were well supported in RN 4 years ago either.

I can't think of a single reason I would want an overlay EXCEPT an alert, and even then, I don't think he's right.

In my experience Flutter is not any less productive than RN is, I'd prefer the former in every case now.
The last time I was using React Native even text input was broken on Android. It made any app using it basically unusable. Android profiler didn't work either, opening it crashed the runtime.

Flutter has its bugs but they're certainly not that fundamental issues.

Sounds like the opposite to me.

A bug in React Native and fundamental issues in Flutter.

I don't follow. What I outlined were fundamental issues with RN, not with Flutter.
What you outlined sounded like a bug, the Twitter link I posted covered some fundamental Flutter issues.