I have worked as a Flutter Dev and as a SwiftDev and the best salaries have always been in Swift and both frameworks are similar, which is why I chose Swift as my main one for commercial reasons.
I can pretty much echo everything you’ve said. I want to drink the Apple koolaide wrt SwifUI, but I just can’t. It changes waaaayyyy too much. I’d pretty much written off mobile development as a lost cause. Flutter is working really well for my project that I’m building on the side of my regular 9-5. There’s no way I could support both mobile platforms otherwise, and the Cupertino widgets look and work great on android too. Far superior end result compared to react native, too.
Hey David! I think it's a good option, you won't need to worry so much about adopting Material UI and Cupertino separately, as you would with Flutter, and you'll get a very native looking experience on both apps. You'll have less ability to share code to your web apps, because React js and React Native are quite different. Flutter will scale better if you want a consistent representation of your UI across more devices and web, but if you're just focused on Android and iOS, React Native is a great option.
@@wikid_dev thanks. My understanding then is that even for a react developer, there is a learning curve for react native. Is the development nevertheless easier than flutter?
Hey David! Yes there is a bit of a learning curve with React Native, even if you’re coming from a React background, mostly you’re going to encounter some differences with the tooling (deploying to a physical device, publishing to app stores), some API differences like React Native Navigation, and you have different options for styling as you do with react (e.g, Tailwind and Nativewind for RN). The overall experience is best described as familiar but a bit different.
Hey Mic 🚀 so earlier on I did some experiments, I first started with building a SwiftUI app, and then later experimenting with Flutter. But since then I’ve focused all my energy now on Flutter and have left the SwiftUI app alone. At this point the functionality of the Flutter app is far ahead of the SwiftUI one it wouldn’t be a fair comparison. What I can say is, the binary size is very competitive for the capabilities of the program. zenshop is roughly 32MB, I’ve looked at some comparable apps in the similar functionality and they are nearly twice the size. Of course, like any software, your memory size and download size very much depends on the kinds of libraries you’re using and how efficiently you’re using the SDK. I wouldn’t say zenshop is particularly well optimised at this point, I’ve built it as my first ever flutter app! So when I started I really didn’t have a clue, and of course later on I’ve now learned more about Dart and how to build a Flutter app… I could do it better.
in my opinion expo monorepos are far more production ready than flutter, seeing the debacle of the vidcon app a few years back really made me switch to react native (and i had 3+ years of experience in FLutter and used it in prod). Prod with flutter is a real pain and having to submit your whole app binary to apple/google for approval every time you change the tiniest thing (especially for startups that iterate quickly). EAS and expo definitely are lifesavers in prod. Also can't believe you're advocating that RN for web is somehow worse than flutter for web (no one has ever shipped/flexed their f for web without getting a hefty chunk of cash from google)
Hey Daren! I’de love to share with you the amazing work being done at shorebird.dev/ to remedy this shortfall of Flutter (in terms of OTA updates). Currently only Android targets are fully supported, but iOS is in Beta and Windows, macOS targets are planned. I completely agree iterating quickly is the lifeblood of startup culture, and I’m really looking forward to using shorebird in production. For flutter web, my experience of it is pretty good! It’s not perfect (Safari browsers don’t render everything perfectly), but Chrome and Edge (modern browsers) do just fine. I would only recommend Flutter web for App based projects, not say, a landing page or something meant for quick loading and SEO. I’m really looking forward to shipping the full clients to customers, and replacing the React app with the new Flutter front end, I hope you tune in to see future progress, it’s really looking great. Maybe you’ll give Flutter another chance 🎯
I have worked as a Flutter Dev and as a SwiftDev and the best salaries have always been in Swift and both frameworks are similar, which is why I chose Swift as my main one for commercial reasons.
Nice to hear that you jumped into Flutter :)
Thank you❤
thank you, as a new dev id rather build mobile apps with an language like flutter if swift is getting harder
The documentation for Flutter is also really nice, lots of great examples to help you get started 🚀
I can pretty much echo everything you’ve said. I want to drink the Apple koolaide wrt SwifUI, but I just can’t. It changes waaaayyyy too much. I’d pretty much written off mobile development as a lost cause.
Flutter is working really well for my project that I’m building on the side of my regular 9-5. There’s no way I could support both mobile platforms otherwise, and the Cupertino widgets look and work great on android too.
Far superior end result compared to react native, too.
Why do you choose flutter over react native, which I understand is more widely used, and you are already familiar with react? Thanks
Great question! I’ve just uploaded a video about this 🚀
@@wikid_dev thank you very much. If the use case is only building mobile apps for iOS and Android, would you then choose react native over flutter?
Hey David!
I think it's a good option, you won't need to worry so much about adopting Material UI and Cupertino separately, as you would with Flutter, and you'll get a very native looking experience on both apps. You'll have less ability to share code to your web apps, because React js and React Native are quite different. Flutter will scale better if you want a consistent representation of your UI across more devices and web, but if you're just focused on Android and iOS, React Native is a great option.
@@wikid_dev thanks. My understanding then is that even for a react developer, there is a learning curve for react native. Is the development nevertheless easier than flutter?
Hey David!
Yes there is a bit of a learning curve with React Native, even if you’re coming from a React background, mostly you’re going to encounter some differences with the tooling (deploying to a physical device, publishing to app stores), some API differences like React Native Navigation, and you have different options for styling as you do with react (e.g, Tailwind and Nativewind for RN). The overall experience is best described as familiar but a bit different.
If you have 2 comparable versions, could you compare the compiled app sizes?
Hey Mic 🚀 so earlier on I did some experiments, I first started with building a SwiftUI app, and then later experimenting with Flutter. But since then I’ve focused all my energy now on Flutter and have left the SwiftUI app alone. At this point the functionality of the Flutter app is far ahead of the SwiftUI one it wouldn’t be a fair comparison.
What I can say is, the binary size is very competitive for the capabilities of the program.
zenshop is roughly 32MB, I’ve looked at some comparable apps in the similar functionality and they are nearly twice the size.
Of course, like any software, your memory size and download size very much depends on the kinds of libraries you’re using and how efficiently you’re using the SDK.
I wouldn’t say zenshop is particularly well optimised at this point, I’ve built it as my first ever flutter app!
So when I started I really didn’t have a clue, and of course later on I’ve now learned more about Dart and how to build a Flutter app… I could do it better.
in my opinion expo monorepos are far more production ready than flutter, seeing the debacle of the vidcon app a few years back really made me switch to react native (and i had 3+ years of experience in FLutter and used it in prod). Prod with flutter is a real pain and having to submit your whole app binary to apple/google for approval every time you change the tiniest thing (especially for startups that iterate quickly). EAS and expo definitely are lifesavers in prod. Also can't believe you're advocating that RN for web is somehow worse than flutter for web (no one has ever shipped/flexed their f for web without getting a hefty chunk of cash from google)
Hey Daren!
I’de love to share with you the amazing work being done at shorebird.dev/ to remedy this shortfall of Flutter (in terms of OTA updates).
Currently only Android targets are fully supported, but iOS is in Beta and Windows, macOS targets are planned.
I completely agree iterating quickly is the lifeblood of startup culture, and I’m really looking forward to using shorebird in production.
For flutter web, my experience of it is pretty good! It’s not perfect (Safari browsers don’t render everything perfectly), but Chrome and Edge (modern browsers) do just fine. I would only recommend Flutter web for App based projects, not say, a landing page or something meant for quick loading and SEO.
I’m really looking forward to shipping the full clients to customers, and replacing the React app with the new Flutter front end, I hope you tune in to see future progress, it’s really looking great.
Maybe you’ll give Flutter another chance 🎯