All language subtitles for 012 Flutter Alternatives__en

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if React Native and Ionic doesn't tell you anything.

These are simply alternatives to using Flutter, at least in a certain way. Flutter is not the only tool,

the only approach that allows you to build iOS and Android apps with one programming language and with

one project codebase.

There are other solutions too,

also besides React Native and Ionic, there for example is also Native Script and so on but React Native

and Ionic are probably the biggest competitors to Flutter

and I just want to show some examples on where Flutter differs from them.

So why would you use Flutter and not React Native or Ionic?

Now let's see how each of these approaches works. Flutter uses Dart and the Flutter framework and

Dart is a programming language developed by Google. React Native on other hand uses Javascript and the

React library and Ionic uses just Javascript and any or no framework at all that you want

and by the way, I also do have courses on React Native and Ionic in case you want to have a look at that.

Now the result of Flutter is that you get compiled native apps, so you get real native apps compiled for

the target platforms. For React Native, that's pretty much the same but I wrote partly compiled here because

the apps are compiled to native apps but there also are parts in your code, in your Javascript code

which is actually not compiled but which is basically enclosed in the native app and runs as Javascript

in the native app, instead of as compiled code and that's different for Flutter, there

all the code is compiled and runs as native machine code

therefore and for Ionic, nothing is compiled.

There you actually have a web app which is wrapped inside of a native app, so you still get a native

app which you can publish to the app stores but it's just a wrapper around your web app.

Now the advantage of this Ionic approach is that you can use normal web technologies and if you're a

web developer, it's particularly easy to create such apps and you can use all your normal web development

skills to build cross-platform apps there. A downside of this wrapped approach of course could be performance.

Now for Flutter, it's also important to understand that we don't compile to iOS or Android UI components

but that Flutter gives you an app that controls the entire screen and every pixel on it. For React

Native, that's different,

there you do compile to iOS and Android UI components, so the parts of the React Native app that are compiled

is in the end the user interface and there

for example if you render a button, it is compiled to the native iOS button for iOS and to the native

Android button for Android, which means you have less customization possibilities because for example

if you can't add a drop shadow to the native iOS button, you can't add it to the React Native button because

that's compiled to the iOS button. For Flutter, since it controls every pixel on its own,

you can style it in whichever way you want or Flutter lets you at least because the native button restrictions

don't matter to Flutter.

Now for Ionic, there is no compilation to Native equivalence, instead you have a web app, so you can style

a button as you could style it in any web app,

it's not compiled to a native button. Now with Flutter, you can build cross-platform apps, mobile apps and

actually even web apps and desktop apps, though as long as that's in very early stages, it will not be

part of the course,

I do cover it once it is more stable though. For React Native, it's pretty much only about mobile apps,

though there is a project, an unofficial project if you will, which allows you to use your React Native

app

also to get a web app as a result. For Ionic, you by default since you build a web app that's wrapped

by a native app, you by default have a web app as well, right?

You also have full cross-platform support,

you can get a mobile app with this wrapped approach,

you have a web app anyways and you can also build a desktop app by wrapping it around this web app

so to say, with a tool named Electron. Now who's working on these projects? Flutter is developed by Google,

React Native is developed by Facebook and Ionic is developed by a company which is called Ionic and therefore,

they all have big companies backing them, especially React Native and Flutter of course but also the

Ionic company is earning its money with the Ionic framework and therefore regarding the future, all three

should be very stable and under active development for a long time,

so that shouldn't influence your choice. What should influence your choice then?

Well for Flutter, there you have the great advantage that you have real native apps, so you get great

performance,

no web view wrapped app which automatically has a bit worse performance because of that wrapping,

instead you have meshing code which is running and that gives you a great performance and because Flutter

controls every pixel on the screen, you also have a high flexibility, you have a lot of control over your

app.

Now some people also might not like this approach of not having the platform primitives but instead

have Flutter control everything because you could argue that it's therefore harder to get the default

Android and iOS look and that it requires a bit more work from your side to get the look

but that's up to you to decide,

I think the higher customization possibilities actually aren't too bad and are a nice advantage but

in the end, that's of course up to your personal preference.

React Native and Ionic are certainly nice alternatives and that's why I do have courses in all of them

and attached to this lecture,

you actually find a link to an article and a video which I created where I compare these alternatives

and dig a bit deeper into the details of these approaches and give you a more detailed comparison. As

a first summary here,

Flutter is a great choice of course because you have real compiled apps and with every pixel controlled

by Flutter, you have a lot of flexibility and high performance.