[synergy20]

flutter does a so so job on desktop and it's web version is wasm based.

the job market for dart flutter is a drop while react is the lake.

react with electron, react native, react itself together are still the only ones production ready cross platform GUI with widest adoption

[mdhb]

comments about job markets aside…

The first and the third paragraphs really haven’t been true for some time now.

Flutter is absolutely production ready as a cross platform GUI.

[pzo]

For ios and android maybe but I doubt for web. Also 12k+ open issues, team layoffs and all founders that left don't brink confidence to flutter. I think also roadmap and progress in last year doesn't look stellar.

On the other hand I think flutter lost a lot of benefits comparing to 5 years ago - now we have stable better swift and swiftui and better kotlin with jetpack compose - those support also apple watch, macos, tvos, visions os, Google wear, Google TV and with current jetbrains compose desktops like windows is already stable.

React native and web ecosystem also improved a lot in the last year.

[mdhb]

I keep seeing this coming up and I have no idea where it’s coming from like it’s some self reinforcing feedback loop based on just utter bullshit.

If I am remembering correctly the headcount on the Futter team literally changed by a single person.

Here are some actual real life numbers you can use if you want to gauge the health of the two projects:

1. https://github.com/facebook/react-native/pulse

2. https://github.com/flutter/flutter/pulse

Specifically Flutter’s 108 merged pull requests to React Native’s 1 and Flutter’s 330 closed issues to React Native’s 18.

Also note that this doesn’t even include their rendering engine which had another 90+ closed pull requests https://github.com/flutter/engine/pulse

The truth of the matter is that Flutter is actually is far better shape both from a technical and open source perspective.

[pzo]

I did checked pulse for those on github on regular bases. Change to monthly and notice out of 450commits more than 170 commits are by flutter-engine-autoroll bot just auto updating some packages, then next second user did ~30commits, then you have few another flutter bots with some commits. Then go compare with react native.

[mdhb]

You are cherry picking things here. If this is some ideological thing for you I’m really not interested in having that conversation.

The health of the two projects genuinely isn’t close at all. Comparing what they are actually both shipping in terms of features in the last year is two very very different stories.

[pzo]

I'm neither flutter nor react native developer just native mobile dev but evaluating both techs so don't have stake in the game right now. Just showing to other so they can make their own judgement:

Flutter monthly pulse: https://github.com/flutter/flutter/pulse/monthly "Excluding merges, 83 authors have pushed 451 commits to master and 461 commits to all branches" but:

1st engine-flutter-autoroll (bot with revisions autoroll): 185 commits

2nd zanderso (google employee): 25 commits

3rd ValentilVignal (contributor): 14 commits

in top 15 contributors for flutter you have also other bots such as: fluttergithubbot, auto-submit[bot], flutter-pub-roller-bot, dependabot[bot]

React Native monthly pulse: https://github.com/facebook/react-native/pulse/monthly "Excluding merges, 84 authors have pushed 437 commits to main and 575 commits to all branches"

1st cipolleschi (meta employee): 92 commits

2nd cortinico (meta employee): 83 commits

3rd NickGerleman (contributor): 45 commits

no bots in top 15 contributors

Also keep in mind React Native is based on React repo project. On top of that you have a lot of work by community in:

- expo https://github.com/expo/expo

- react native reanimated https://github.com/software-mansion/react-native-reanimated

- react navigation https://github.com/react-navigation/react-navigation

- react native skia https://github.com/Shopify/react-native-skia

All of those packages are highly maintained and are pretty used in all RN projects and considered standard.