Swift Vs React Native Vs Flutter(Dart). Which one to choose?
There are many programming languages and frameworks are available for mobile app development and because of that there is always a debate that which programming language is easier and never ends. So I will say there is no exact answer to this question “Which programming language is best?” We select the programming language based on our requirements and budgets.
In 2020, Mostly 3 programming languages are in use for mobile app development i.e Swift, React Native & Flutter. Our main goal is to deliver fast app with good animations and which fulfils the user requirements.
Let’s dig into each programming language.
Introduction — Installation — Architecture
With the launch of Swift language by Apple, native iOS App Development become more interesting. Swift is popular, fast and type-safe language. To develop an app you have to download and install the developer tool and in-build frameworks from Apple. Swift gives you the wider range of benefits, it is not only use for mobile app development but also for web services and desktop apps also. Every hardware that has Apple software in it like TV, watches, iPod, iPad uses Swift code init. Primary tool used to develop any software for Apple hardware is Xcode which support Swift.
React Native is an open-source mobile application framework created by Facebook which is used to iOS and Android apps from the same source code. React Native use JavaScript and with the launch for React JS, it become easy for web develop to develop web app. React Native create a bridge using Javascript Bridge to communicate between native language and javascript. This communication happens by sending JSON message from both the side.
Flutter is an open-source, multi-platform mobile SDK from Google which can be used to build iOS and Android apps from the same source code. Flutter use Dart as a programming language which is also based on OOPS concepts. Flutter doest not required the bridging concept to communicate with native components as it has everything inside it and gives full support to native features.
User Interface
Using bridging concept you can easily develop native UI and React native also provides few native UI features. But it become difficult sometime to replicate complex native UI.
Whereas Flutter have UI package inside it, which means we can easily use native UI features and develop the app.
App Reloading
With the help of SwiftUI, you can reload the app and can also use non-native solutions to add new functionalities.
React Native use hot reloading to refresh the changes in hybrid app. React Native use Virtual DOM which compares the current and last changes and update only latest changes in code.
Dart also uses hot reload functionality, and it is considered much faster when it comes to introducing changes in your codebase.
CI/CD Integration
To speed up the process of integration and deployment, we do CI/CD process.
For swift, we need MacOS with Xcode installed in it and for CI/CD we have go with Fastlane or Jenkins to speed up the deployment process with all the certificate validation.
Even for React Native you can use Fastlane or Jenkins for app integration.
Flutter app integration is based on Nevercode that uses Codemagic CI/CD tool to make the integration faster and easier.
App Size
Swift based iOS app size is not much because it uses mostly in build frameworks.
For React Native, app is size is little bit more than Swift since we use third party libraries.
Whereas Dart iOS app size is more as compare to React Native & Swift due to the size of Dart Engine.
So which programming language we should choose to develop iOS mobile app? There is not correct answer. If you want same codebase and have less budget than you can go for React Native of Flutter. An experience software company always provide the best solution based on the size, time and budget available. But always follow the latest trend when it comes to mobile app development and native will always remain alive.
I hope you enjoyed this, and I look forward to seeing how you use any of these programming language to develop fast and responsive app. If you have any questions or comments, please write a note below!
