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Dart vs Ionic: What are the differences?
Introduction
Dart and Ionic are both frameworks used for building cross-platform mobile applications. While they have similarities, there are key differences that set them apart from each other. Below are the six main differences between Dart and Ionic.
Programming Language: Dart uses its own programming language called Dart, which is a statically-typed language that compiles to JavaScript. Ionic, on the other hand, uses web technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to build apps.
UI Components: Dart has its own set of UI components, which are provided by the Flutter framework. These components offer a rich set of features and are highly customizable. Ionic, on the other hand, uses standard web-based UI components, which are based on the CSS framework, to create the user interface of the app.
Performance: Dart has been designed for high performance and aims to provide a smooth and lag-free experience to the users. Ionic, being based on web technologies, may not perform as efficiently as Dart in terms of speed and responsiveness.
Development Workflow: Dart follows a reactive programming model, where changes in the UI are automatically reflected in the underlying data model. This makes development easier and reduces the chance of bugs. Ionic follows a more traditional approach, where changes in the UI need to be manually implemented.
Native Integration: Dart has strong support for native integrations, allowing developers to easily access native features and capabilities of the underlying platform. Ionic, on the other hand, relies on plugins and wrappers to interact with native functionalities, which may introduce some overhead and limitations.
Development Community: Dart has a growing and dedicated community, with support from Google, making it easier to find resources, tutorials, and help. Ionic, being based on web technologies, benefits from a larger community of web developers, providing a diverse range of resources and plugins.
In summary, Dart offers a unique programming language, high-performance capabilities, reactive development workflow, and strong native integration, while Ionic utilizes web technologies, has a more traditional development approach, and benefits from a larger community.
Can anyone help me decide what's best for app development or even android Oreo development? I'm in a state dilemma at the moment. I want to do Android programming, not necessarily web development. I have heard a lot of people recommend one of these, and it seems that both the tools can do the job. Which language would you choose?
I assume that you mean Flutter by Dart. I have over 6 years experience programming in Android SDK, but about 1,5 month in Flutter. So far I think that Flutter is the future for mobile development. Flutter SDK is much better designed. Ecosystem of libraries seems having much higher quality. I would even say that android opensource libs are having really poor quality. Many times I am wondering how can garbage like that have so many stars at GitHub. Android SDK is hard to compose so you reinvent even basic things on and on, which is totally different story at Flutter. Lolcycle? Both are having good documentation. I quess apps in Flutter can be done in 1/3 of time compared to develop AndroidSDK and iOS, its design is that much better and contemporary. As of language comparison - Kotlin is better, but the difference is not that important. Go from one language to other is no problem. Dart is being updated with new features.
I've selected Flutter and Dart for my side projects and never regretted. Dart learning curve is easy after any OOP language . Flutter as a framework is also has a low entry threshold. I've already started development after a week of learning. Pros for me: code can be build for Android and IOS devices (for ios you need mac or VM), apps written in Dart have great performance on each of these platforms, flexibility. Cons: if you want to build a product as a business and want to hire a new Flutter Developer in the future it can be a problem as the framework and language is not popular for the moment.
It depends on what is the purpose of your app development. Do you want to make one app that shares the codebase for both iOS and Android? If yes, then Dart is the way to go. Does your app include interacting with hardware features like camera, Bluetooth, if yes, then go for native Android for better performance? Dart is good for simpler UI apps where you just do basic crud operations over the network and show data but if you need richer UI experience go with native.
I have worked in mobile development since 2010. I have experienced myself on various techs including Native SDK (Android), React Native (from 2016) and Flutter (2018). Almost the apps nowadays can be built using cross-platforms frameworks like React Native or Flutter. I suggest you start with Flutter. Flutter SDK is designed well to speed up your development and it still keeps the quality for your apps. If you're familiar with OOP languages (Java, C#...), switching to Dart is really quick and easy. Of course, sometimes you will need to dive deep into native parts but almost the cases you don't need. Good luck!
I am currently learning web development with Python and JavaScript course by CS50 Harvard university. It covers python, Flask, Django, SQL, Travis CI, javascript,HTML ,CSS and more. I am very interested in Flutter app development. Can I know what is the difference between learning these above-mentioned frameworks vs learning flutter directly? I am planning to learn flutter so that I can do both web development and app development. Are there any perks of learning these frameworks before flutter?
Hey Muhamed, For web development, you'll have to learn how to write backend APIs and how to build UI for browsers, apps, etc. If you're just starting off with programming, I'd suggest you stick to one language and trying developing everything using it to cut the unnecessary learning overhead. Although Python and JavaScript are very similar for beginners, JavaScript is the only available option for both frontend and backend development for a web application. You can start working with Node.js for your API development and Vanilla JS along with HTML/CSS for UI. You'll only need to learn one language to do all of this. Hope this helps.
Flutter is good for everything and it is getting better as I am speaking. Flutter Web is almost ready for production and I have made 2 complex working websites already.
Well. Flutter is just a Framework (just like Django btw.) and it uses Dart as a programming language. Django is kind of solving a different problem than Dart. Dart is intened for use in Front End Applications and Django is a Framework for Back-End Web Development.
So if you want to program Flutter Apps (although i wouldn't recommend it for any serious web development yet since Flutter web isn't very mature yet) i would recommend you just lern Dart.
From a management and hiring perspective, I recommend Flutter (Dart). It provides native solutions to both mobile platform ( (Android and IOS) while having the same knowledge. Hiring managers look at this as an advantage since a developer can provide solutions for both platforms whit the same knowledge. The Flutter framework is growing and there is a lot of resources to ground your knowledge and start experimenting. Dart is also a great language that covers most E2E necessities, so again, no further need of learning one language for FE and another for BE and services. It is my belief that Dart will surpass Kotlin soon, and will leverage to Python and Java in the upcoming year.
If you are interested in Flutter, learn it on your own time, parallel to the course. No matter what order you do them, eventually you will end up learning them all anyway ;-)
Hi, we are an early startup (with an iPOC prototype) but need to get started on our MVP, and our tech developers in India recommended a hybrid, and they use Ionic, then we spoke with a software company in the US and he recommended Flutter or React Native. Any advice or input for us on the differences between these? Our app will need Bluetooth GPS for "near me" and social media sharing reviews capability, and also link on the backend with businesses. Thanks in advance for any help you can give!
Maturity, Community, Facility, Libs React Native is the principal platform of mobile cross-platform development today, Flutter is it's a promise.
I would never recommend you to go with Ionic, Because of the User experience it provides is subpar. Flutter is most promising, Can be easily used to develop great user experience in no time. React native is also good, but it's phasing out in my opinion, while Ionic has already phased out. Flutter also provides great developer experience, resulting in fast and productive developers. I would have to press hard to think of a CON about flutter when recommending it for your needs.
Flutter is built on DART which is written in GO. GO compiles to binary. Hence is faster than any java based framework. It provides superior performance and has a simplified UI process for designing apps.
It depends also on your team skills. Flutter is fast to learn, fast to develop with and the performance is much better in comparison to React. If your team is already highly skilled in React Native it could be the better option - if not Flutter is my 100% recommendation. We rapidly prototype and deliver MVPs with Flutter since two years.
Even if React Native is older (I didn't say mature) you should go for Flutter, It's works really well and the developer experience is great (auto-completion, plugin etc). I spent years with React Native and now I am using Flutter and I don't regret It. Even if you have to learn a new language, It's pretty simple even more If you know some OOP, Java and Javascript ES6 syntax in some case. One other advantage is the facility to design app in Flutter, you have widgets for everything and you can adapt any design made by your designer. For example you can't make a simple custom box shadow with React-Native ...
I don‘t have practical experience with flutter but between ionic and react native I‘d say both a perfectly viable options and we have used both for a number of production apps. We normally go with ionic on capacitor because we build a lot of pwa/web apps so we can use the same code for all. We don‘t use much of ionic elements, we do most styles on our own.
The comments that the user experience is bad I cannot agree with. A well designed and developed ionic apo can hardly be distinguished from a native app. But obviously that depends also on the usecase and type of app.
I hope this helps
Hi! I have to develop a software solution for a youth church group, for my graduation project. In the first meeting that I have with the coordinators, they did not have a clear idea of what they want. The biggest problem they have is the attendance control, they do it manually and that causes errors.
I was thinking of developing an Android app in Android Studio because that is the tool I master, but a friend told me that I consider using a tool that builds for iOS, Android and web. I have like 6 months. I own a MacBookAir but I do not know Swift (for iOS). I am familiar with MySQL, PHP, Apache, JSP,HTML,CSS.
Summary: What tool can I use that is easy to learn and easy to scale?
It's probably not relevant anymore, but I think Ionic with Angular as the frontend is the right choice. For IDE I would choose Visual Studio Code. You can just create a basic web application with responsive design, which is already included if you are going to use Ionic components with Material Design to create your app. You don't need to know Swift, you don't even have to create mobile apps, just create a responsive (Ionic already is) web app, or PWA. Upon browsing your website from a mobile device for example using google chrome, you will be prompted to create a shortcut of the website in your mobile phone. After you do this, there will be an icon in your phone that looks like an icon to launch an app, it will launch your website in full screen mode - for the user's perspective it will look like he is using a native app. Access https://ionicframework.com/docs/angular/pwa from your android chrome browser, go to tab options (3 vertical dots), click on Add to Home screen. When you launch the website from the shortcut, you'll see that it behaves and looks like a native app.
I think you should chose between Flutter and Ionic. With those two options, the main question is about graphs and performance. Are they really important for your application? If the answer is yes, your tool is Flutter but, if the answer is that you need an easy tool to create an app with some basic components I would choose Ionic. You have a library with lots of components that you can use and they have native UI by default (for Android and iOS).
You will find more support if you use Ionic with Angular as frontend framework (you have the option to use Vue or React but this is a new feature for Ionic and I think there are more difficult to learn than Angular).
You can develop and debug the majority of features on PC (I don't know if that is possible with Flutter). And when you will finish the app, create iOS and Android versions is simple.
Flutter is easy to use and easy to understand. Once you have completed the android platform, you can easily build it to ios, Web or desktop on a single code base.
- Electron is for desktop apps, so not useful for you.
- Flutter has better performance, but Ionic is decent as well, I would use Ionic unless you're making a game or graphic-intensive app.
- Ionic is more flexible since you have the whole NPM ecosystem available, while flutter is more recent, thus libraries for it are less in quantity and battle-tested than the ones in NPM.
- Ionic 4 introduced CSS variables, which improved immensely the theming process for the app, which was the hardest issue Ionic development had.
- Ionic has extended to many frameworks so it's compatible with Angular and React frameworks, meaning more flexibility, personally I would recommend Ionic with Angular over React since it's more suited to enterprise-level apps.
Hi there. So Electron embeds everything in a webview, which means that what you would have to develop would be a Node project most probably. Ionic does the same (kindof but won't bore you with specifics) but it does it much more efficiently. Usually you do Ionic apps with JS frameworks like Angular or React (this one recently added). Flutter on the other hand does native apps, it does it really good but it's support for Web is in beta and it's relatively simple to setup if you already know the SDK and the environment.
My recommendation would be that you do your app using Angular/Ionic if you reaaally need the multi-platform environment and there's different reasons in this case:
- Since it's a graduation project you need it to be as simple as it can be and adding a new technology adds to the learning curve.
- Flutter is great if you have different complex UI or if you have specific performance needs that require native support and in your case it does not seem like you need that.
- Flutter is also an incredibly powerful tool but it's learning curve might be tricky if you have not developed native apps before so I wouldn't recommend you start off like this if you have time sensitive projects like a graduation project. It does have great docs and an awesome community but I'd suggest you stick as close to what you know as you can.
- Ionic/Angular uses Typescript (a type javascript wrapper) and Angular (JS framework) so you will have to learn a little bit but if you already know HTML, CSS and Javascript you won't have that much of a hard time. Also there's quite a lot in terms of documentation and tooling already tested around this combination.
- Ionic/Angular has a really good CLI that helps you stick to the architecture they recommend so you wouldn't have to worry about it that much.
- Ionic/Angular helps you test either locally in the web browser as well as your devices which is in the end what you want if you are looking for a multi-platform system. Flutter also does this but is not quite in a stable state (yet!).
Anyway, in the end, if you go for the multi-platform suggestion I think, because of time you would be better off with Ionic. If you decide that you don't need that as of right now (which is fine as well) you can start with just the Android app and plan on the different things you might eventually need like a website or other different stuff. Cheers!
JavaScript is at the forefront of our entire development approach. Not only do we use different JavaScript frameworks and management tools, but we also use pure vanilla JavaScript to solve simple problems throughout all of our client's builds. JavaScript is a general purpose programming language that can be blazing fast and fun to work with. There's not one project we are working on that doesn't involve it.
- Javascripts is the most populated language in the world.
- Easy to learn & deployed production
- Fast development
- Strong community
- Completed Documents
- Native performance with lower RAM used.
- Easy to handle native issues by using native code like Java / Objective C
- Powered by Facebook.
While with Ionic it is possible to make mobile applications with only web technologies, Flutter is more performant and is easy to use if you are willing to learn Dart, which is a fun language. Plus, it has awesome documentation and, while its ecosystem isn't near as big as JavaScript's is, it has a good package manager called Pub and its packages are generally high quality.
Pros of Dart
- Backed by Google59
- Flutter53
- Twice the speed of Javascript39
- Great tools35
- Scalable30
- Open source27
- Made for the future26
- Can be used on Frontend25
- Polymer Dart22
- Angular Dart22
- Cross platform18
- Like Java16
- Easy to learn14
- Dartanalyzer13
- Runs on Google Cloud Platform12
- Easy to Understand10
- Amazing concurrency primitives9
- Is to JS what C is to ASM8
- Flutter works with darts7
- R3
- Can run Dart in AWS Lambda3
- Looks familiar, with purposely implemented features1
Pros of Ionic
- Allows for rapid prototyping248
- Hybrid mobile228
- It's angularjs208
- Free186
- It's javascript, html, and css179
- Ui and theming109
- Great designs78
- Mv* pattern74
- Reuse frontend devs on mobile71
- Extensibility65
- Great community31
- Open source29
- Responsive design23
- Good cli21
- So easy to use14
- Angularjs-based13
- Beautifully designed13
- Widgets12
- Allows for rapid prototyping, hybrid mobile11
- Typescript11
- Quick prototyping, amazing community10
- Easy setup10
- Angular2 support8
- Fast, easy, free7
- Because of the productivity and easy for development7
- Base on angular7
- So much thought behind what developers actually need7
- Super fast, their dev team is amazingly passionate6
- Easy to use6
- It's Angular6
- UI is awesome4
- Hot deploy4
- Material design support using theme3
- Amazing support3
- It's the future3
- Angular3
- Allow for rapid prototyping3
- Easy setup, development and testing3
- Ionic creator3
- User Friendly2
- It's angular js2
- Complete package2
- Simple & Fast2
- Fastest growing mobile app framework2
- Best Support and Community2
- Material Design By Default2
- Cross platform2
- Documentation2
- Because I can use my existing web devloper skills2
- Removes 300ms delay in mobile browsers2
- Responsive1
- Native access1
- Typescript support1
- Ionic conect codeigniter1
- Fast Prototyping1
- All Trending Stack1
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Cons of Dart
- Lack of ORM3
- Locked in - JS or TS interop is very hard to accomplish3
- A0
Cons of Ionic
- Not suitable for high performance or UI intensive apps20
- Not meant for game development15
- Not a native app2