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siquick

> Lower dev resources

Learning a completely new language in Dart to even get started with Flutter doesn't seem like low dev resources.

With React Native you are using:

- Javascript which most devs have a grasp on in 2020

- JSX which really isn't much different to HTML

- Styling is practically just CSS with slightly different property formatting and naming

If you've decided to go down the RN then theres a decent chance that your devs have used React before and there really isn't much between React and RN.

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- A million packages that never really seem to be in sync

- A ton of different ways to do the same thing (Expo or not for example)

- Documentation is always outdated

- You still have to deal with the most annoying part of native apps, namely compilation and certification. If it was a book it would have the title: "Native apps: the shitty parts"

- Doing the same thing twice with this package management and build system (or ten times...) can yield a different result

- JavaScript is an awful language, TypeScript makes it more tolerable but you can't really escape the problems JavaScript has

<Also fanboy > Learning Flutter is really easy. I know everyone says it, but I encourage everyone to spend one Saturday trying to build some toy app with a single Google Maps screen or something. I fought with React Native for so long because it's dominant but I don't think I can ever go back. I never found myself getting truly comfortable with it or feeling like it did what I expected.

Im a backend dev so I really love that flutter will handle so much of the positioning of widgets/components on the screen AND give me a decent styling out the box and I only have to intervene if I want to. Thinking back to Grids and Flexbox makes my skin crawl lol.

Xamarin and Qt also give me the same, with more useful industry programming languages.

Both of which are now practically deaf on mobile. Flutter comes from Google, and while that doesn't guarantee it'll live, at least it has better potential.

They are only dead on the SV HN bubble kind of thing.

Dart also comes from Google and if it wasn't for Ad Words team it would be more dead than anything else.

Flutter is it very last opportunity to stay relevant.

Given that, I rather bet in dead technology with useful programming languages.

Hard disagree. Microsoft has practically abandoned Xamarin and is doing React Native themselves these days. Qt tried on mobile but never took off, there's hardly any mobile apps made with it and the few there are feel very out of place. Note that I really like Qt/QML so I wish it fared better -- please let me know if you have some success stories to share.

Flutter is the last option for Dart to stay relevant sure. You learn a programming language in a couple of days though so it just doesn't matter, and doesn't change the fact that in mobile world C# and C++ are just as irrelevant. I worked for years with C++, but I don't expect to ever again need it in a professional setting.

This is of course just from mobile perspective. Everywhere else Flutter is currently useless, and Qt/C# perhaps a good choice.

Microsoft has officially communicated many times, including at BUILD 2019 and .NET Conf, that React Native is for Web developers, and Xamarin for .NET developers.

They aren't one pony trick shop.

Qt didn't not take off for free beer mobile devs, it is doing alright for the kind of corporations that actually buy development tools.

Again we aren't talking about SV HN kind of bubbles here.

And I am betting Flutter won't save Dart, specially with Android team doing JetPack Composer and teaming with JetBrains on Kotlin/Native portability between iOS and Android.

Long term, PWAs with WebGL and WebAssembly will take it all.

The article topic was mobile development frameworks, so that was the basis for my judgement of Xamarin and Qt too. I do mobile development professionally, and Xamarin and Qt aren't current topics. It's basically only native vs. React Native, with Flutter recently challenging the React Native side on dev mindset but not yet on job opportunities.

Qt is used in corporations that buy development tools yes. But not for mobile, it's mostly embedded/medical/automotive. Xamarin peaked after Windows Phone died as the refuge of C# development, but React Native ate its crossplatform pie. Are they used? Sure, as a very small niche. But the fact is that currently companies with money build two native apps, and those with less money to throw around use React Native to target both platforms.

It's hard to get excited about web technologies replacing native apps when they've been upcoming contenders since around 2007 starting with Symbian. Maybe it happens one day, maybe it doesn't.

On my market if JavaScript is at all considered, only Ionic comes into play.

Don't project your anecdotes in world wide projections.

Any numbers from Gartner reports or something, to prove how my little bubble is a niche?

For mobile non-game apps in app stores, targeting private people as users? If so, you then do have a very different market around there indeed. Let's not dig for market research reports, I don't really have the interest for that now. I'll just take your word for it.

That's neat, im just not much of a .NET person myself and I guess that using a language/framework that is enjoyable is more valuable to me than the portability aspect. I came into React Native for those portability reasons, and it wasn't enough to keep me excited about it. I don't see how Xamarin and .NET, which im even less into, would be different.

Also I'm not sure that Xamarain or QT are really very relevant, HNSVBubble or otherwise.

https://insights.stackoverflow.com/trends?tags=xamarin%2Crea...

Learning Dart is definitely not a large dev hurdle.

Most people (esp. js devs) can read dart and understand what it is doing without ever having even seen the code before.

I've found it takes an experienced engineer about two weeks to learn enough Go to be productive and Dart is honestly easier than that.

I have 20 C#/JS/SQL developers I want to put in a mobile project. So I’m supposed to eat an employee-year of salary to even consider Flutter+Dart?

Not gonna happen, especially with Google’s track record. Already been burned by the Angular v1 -> v2+ nightmare.

If you are an iOS or Android developer already, learning dart vs the mess that is javascript seems more appealing. I would imagine something similar for non-JS backend developers.

Web devs are not the only kind of developer out there.

Any competent dev will be functional in Dart in days. Flutter really is fantastic, I like being in Dart 90% of the time, no XML, no Storyboard. Currently employed on a Flutter project, hopefully jobs aspects improve.

I was part of a team who had to do two upgrades of the react native version. and every time, it was a pain taking weeks of developer productivity away. ... i wonder if React Native fixed this problem... but their track record is not the best...

The 0.6 release brought in autolinking and a better integration with Cocoapods so worth checking out.

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