React Native was developed by Facebook and has been available open source since 2015. It is now an adult and stable tool. The beta version of Flutter was released in February 2018 by Google. Since then, the community has been growing, but still limited. That as an introduction, but what is really important when comparing React Native vs. flutter?
React Native and Flutter differ from each other in terms of programming language, the way in which native components are accessible, the documentation, the testing possibilities and the way in which the export to IOS & Android takes place. Let's take a closer look at those elements.
Are you still in doubt between hybrid or cross platform app development? Read our blog about native. vs. hybrid vs. cross platform app development.
programming language
React Native uses JavaScript, a widely used programming language. Furthermore, React Native, as the name suggests, uses the React framework. Because this is by far the most used web development framework, the step to React Native will be small for many developers. Furthermore, there are plenty of tutorials to be found and it is easy to reuse code.
Flutter, on the other hand, works with the Dart language introduced by Google in 2011. This relatively new programming language is hardly used. Object oriented concepts make the language easy to learn for developers who are familiar with Java, PHP or C#. However, as the complexity of the apps increases, it is necessary to learn more about Dart. In addition, Dart is supported by relatively few IDEs & text editors.