What it's like to work on Flutter with the extensive React Native Background: Some Key observations

So, I have been building mobile applications for over 3 years with the JavaScript framework React Native, But recently I had to work on a Flutter mobile app and here I would be discussing my observations while working on Flutter.

The cool animations 🔥

Flutter is known for its excellent animation capabilities, which sets it apart from other frameworks like React Native. While working on React Native mostly we have to rely on third-party libraries to implement complex transitions, but Flutter has its collection of animations and even provides motion effects in certain widgets. So overall, I have observed that Flutter is great for handling straightforward animation tasks like delays or reversals, while React Native may be better suited for more advanced control over flexible values.

Saves time by using built-in UI Widgets ⏰

Flutter uses pre-built and fully customizable elements to show how things look on the screen when you use the app. This means that we can save time by not having to create these elements from scratch, unlike we have to do that in React Native. For example, if you need a dropdown or a menu in your app, Flutter already has these elements available for you and offers 200+ built-in widgets to use.

Testing and Debugging 🛠️

Flutter uses the same code for both mobile platforms, which means it needs fewer tests compared to React Native. Additionally, Flutter provides comprehensive and built-in tools for automatic testing, including testing for UI, widgets, and integration.

While React Native primarily emphasizes unit-level testing and lacks support in other areas and I have to use testing libraries for React Native like Jest and Jasmine.

Performance 🚀

While working on both, I have observed that Flutter is faster than React Native because React Native needs JavaScript bridges modules which slows down the app, but Flutter is compiled directly into the native ARM code for both iOS and Android which makes it faster.

Size of the App 🤏🏻

Here, I would go with React Native because we can reduce the size of the applications to as low as 3 MBs by enabling Hermes and ProGuard. While Flutter's default app size is a minimum of 60MB, and as per my knowledge and research, there's not any way to reduce the size of the mobile application as compared to React Native.

So, here were some thoughts about my experience with Flutter as of now. I hope you like the articles. For any query please reach out to me on LinkedIn.