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Kotlin vs NativeScript vs React Native: What are the differences?
Popularity and Adoption: Kotlin is a programming language that focuses on the Android platform, gaining popularity among Android developers due to its concise syntax and interoperability with existing Java code. NativeScript is a framework for building native mobile applications using JavaScript or TypeScript. React Native, on the other hand, is a popular framework developed by Facebook for building cross-platform mobile applications using JavaScript. While Kotlin is specific to Android development, NativeScript and React Native allow developers to build applications for both iOS and Android platforms.
Performance and Native Components: Kotlin compiles down to Java bytecode, which runs on the JVM, while NativeScript allows direct access to native APIs for maximum performance. React Native uses a bridge to interact with native components, which can introduce performance overhead compared to Kotlin and NativeScript.
UI Components and Design: Kotlin relies on XML layouts for defining user interfaces, similar to Java. NativeScript uses a single codebase for both iOS and Android applications, with full access to native components for a consistent look and feel. React Native utilizes a JavaScript to UI mapping, allowing developers to create components using JavaScript for a more flexible UI design approach.
Tooling and Community Support: Kotlin has strong support from Google and the Android community, with dedicated tools and resources for Android development. NativeScript provides a robust set of CLI tools for building and testing mobile applications efficiently. React Native benefits from the large community of JavaScript developers, offering a wide range of libraries and plugins for extending functionalities.
Code Reusability and Maintenance: Kotlin enables code reuse through its interoperability with Java, allowing developers to leverage existing Java libraries and frameworks. NativeScript promotes a single codebase for iOS and Android, reducing the need for platform-specific code. React Native encourages code sharing across platforms, with the ability to write platform-specific code when necessary for optimal performance.
Learning Curve and Documentation: Kotlin offers a smooth learning curve for Java developers, with comprehensive documentation and resources provided by Google. NativeScript requires knowledge of JavaScript or TypeScript for building applications, with documentation tailored to guide developers through the framework's features. React Native benefits from the vast resources and tutorials available for JavaScript developers, making it easier for newcomers to get started with cross-platform development.
In Summary, Kotlin is tailored for Android development, providing strong community support and interoperability with Java, while NativeScript focuses on building native mobile applications with direct access to native APIs, and React Native offers cross-platform development using JavaScript with a wide range of libraries and resources.
Hi Friends, I am new to #MobileAppDevelopment and I need to make a #CrossPlatformMobileApp. I want guidance regarding which tools should I use to build a mobile app. Main requirements: integrate Unity game engine and provide a platform for social chats.
Past experience - C++ and Python
I have tagged Flutter and React Native but if anything better than both please suggest them.
Hey, If you are using Unity you are going to have to do the end to end development on Unity, you can directly build for android and iOS on Unity. I dont see how Flutter or React Native fit into this equation. Unity is a standalone engine. As for Social Chats, you could use Firebase or your own API and integrate that in Unity in C#
I agree with Sahil. If Unity is a requirement, best way is to use just that to create your app.
If you really want, it should be possible to use Flutter and Unity together. Using Flutter Unity Widget. Although I wouldn't recommend it just yet. It's too early days.
If you do end up using it, I would be very interested in reading about your experiences.
You can start by small steps with Flutter and after Unity. Flutter = best choice to build a small cross-platform mobile app. With or no flutter, use directly Unity. Y'll have complete control but it's harder for new mobile developers. Keep in mind, the requirement is Unity!
Hello guys, I am new here. So, if I posted without specific guidelines, please ignore.
Basically, I am an iOS developer and developing native apps for the last three years. Recently, I started learning React Native to develop apps for both platforms. If anyone out there knows any useful resources that will become a better react native developer.
#newbie
Well, the first resource I would recommend you is my upcoming book by Packt Publishing, "Professional React Native", but it's due late January next year :) . Now jokes aside (the book's real by the way :) ), the easiest way to build a iOS/Android/Web app with React Native is to do: npm install -g expo-cli expo init some-project cd some-project expo eject
You might have heard of Expo, but trust me, stay away from it. Expo highest value is that it's an already pre-configured 3 platforms environment, but if you don't eject then you're vendor-locked to what Expo has to offer in iOS and Android, which is very poor compared to going full React Native on these platforms, they can't even handle Google Sign In properly and by the way, even if your app is 10 lines of code your app size will be over 40 MB if you don't eject, yep it's that bad, plus the performance is regular and the loading times slow, not to mention that you're stuck with their build service which the free tier makes you wait for hours for a free build slot. It's important to note that when ejecting you don't lose the Web, you simply do expo start --web to start your dev environment and expo build:web to build a static website that you can serve with any web server. Regarding state management, don't bother with "lifting state up" philosophies mixed with Context API to manage your state, lifting state is a great pattern and helps your codebase, Context is great to avoid prop-drilling, but NEVER mix them to achieve app-wide state management, for that, simply go for Redux or MobX, the hype is all about Redux, but I consider MobX far better in many aspects. However, as you're getting new into this I would recommend you start with Redux AND PLEASE grab yourself npm install @manaflair/redux-batch so that you can batch updates and don't bring your app to a crawl. Forget that "connect HOC" thing with React-Redux, don't bother for a second with it, go with Hooks and useSelector and useDispatch and the likes, it will make your code SO much cleaner and smaller. Adopt clean and new Hooks philosophy, avoid writing class components as much as possible and write function components augmented with Hooks.
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.
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!
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'm a huge fan of Vue.js and I'm pretty comfortable with it. I need to build a mobile app for my company and I was now wondering whether I could make use of VueJS with Vue Native instead of switching to React. I know Vue Native builds on top of RN. My question is whether I'd have as much freedom with Vue Native over RN and whether you feel like Vue Native is "production ready" or not. Not sure of which shortcomings I may find using Vue Native... Thanks a lot!!!
Vue Native is definitely production-ready in my experience. I've used both, have apps built with both in production right now, and both are fine technologies. As far as I can recall, there's nothing in RN that you can't do in VN. Given that, I would say go with "the devil you know".
That said, the one downside of VN over RN is that there are a lot more people using RN last I checked, so there are likely more resources readily available.
Hi, I'm a web dev and am using Electron for a desktop app. Now I have to develop a mobile app with the following features:
- Posting/uploading files by users, private messaging between users, download files, moderation of the uploads, push notification of new posts.
- Mods can ban users and delete files.
- Share buttons from the library folder of the user phone.
- When a user uploads a photo, a pencil tool for deleting staff on the pic.
Which tool is better for such a project?
Thanks in advance
Given your experience in electron I think the shortest hop is going to be React Native. Especially since half of the requirements are server-side. Google is doing a pretty great job bringing up Flutter and the tooling is pretty great. For me however, dart seemed like quicksand and not everything is in its final home. React Native is mature, and considering my cursory analysis of your experience and the low complexity of this project, you've got quite a lot of room to grow into Javascript Land. Ultimately, my recommendation is always "play with both, see what you like, and get to know the documentation and the community." Keep your head on a swivel and set aside time to peek greener pastures, but spend most of your time delving deeply into what you're already doing.
But yeah, go with React Native first, get bored of it, learn what the shortcomings are through experience and then see if something else is really more attractive or just a new shiny.
Well, I will personally recommend to go for React Native as I have worked in both of them. React native has big community and it is easy to opt as compared to Flutter. There no doubt about the fact that Flutter is a great framework for developing both Android/IOS apps. However, you should have some experience to go for the same. Both will require prior knowledge as for React Native you have to go through Javascript first with which you are already familiar and for Flutter you need to go through Dart. So being familiar with Javascript you should go for React Native. You can go expo which has lot of inbuilt functionalities for the React Native developers.
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.
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 ...
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.
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
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.
- 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.
We built the first version of our app with RN and it turned out a mess in a while. A lot of bugs along with poor performance out of the box for a fairly large app. Many things, that native platform has, cannot be done with existing solutions for RN. For instance, large titles on iOS are not fully implemented in any of existing navigations libraries. Also there's painfully slow JSON bridge and many other small, yet annoying things. On the other hand Flutter became a really powerful and easy-to-use tool. A bit of a learning curve, of course, because of Dart, but it worth learning. Flutter offers TONS of built-in features, no JSON-bridge, AOT compilation for iOS.
From cross platform development point of view: Using kotlin multiplatform is more convenient than java for implementing cross platform code, since it can be converted to be used in iOS (swift) projects, and it can be easily learned if you already know swift. It still an experimental feature but it helped so far to unify a lot of the common code between our iOS and Android projects. And it is more future proof than java regarding support and maintain multiplatform converting.
I've done some Hybrid Mobile apps with both technologies Apache Cordova
and React Native
and described my experience in my blog.
In a few words, I would suggest to use each technology in accordance what what is your current code base and what do you want to achieve.
React Native is a great option if you need that extra edge in performance with multi-threading and native UI rendering. Or you already have a web app based on React which you want to port to mobile.
On the other hand, if you have an existing web application code and you want to reuse some or all, including the ability to use web third-party libraries, then Cordova is the best option.
I work at Stream and I'm immensely proud of what our team is working on here at the company. Most recently, we announced our Android SDK accompanied by an extensive tutorial for Java and Kotlin. The tutorial covers just about everything you need to know when it comes to using our Android SDK for Stream Chat. The Android SDK touches many features offered by Stream Chat – more specifically, typing status, read state, file uploads, threads, reactions, editing messages, and commands. Head over to https://getstream.io/tutorials/android-chat/ and give it a whirl!
Pros of Kotlin
- Interoperable with Java73
- Functional Programming support55
- Null Safety50
- Official Android support46
- Backed by JetBrains44
- Concise37
- Modern Multiplatform Applications36
- Expressive Syntax28
- Target to JVM27
- Coroutines26
- Open Source24
- Statically Typed19
- Practical elegance19
- Android support17
- Type Inference17
- Readable code14
- Powerful as Scala, simple as Python, plus coroutines <313
- Better Java12
- Pragmatic10
- Lambda9
- Better language for android8
- Expressive DSLs8
- Target to JavaScript8
- Used for Android6
- Less boilerplate code6
- Fast Programming language5
- Less code5
- Native4
- Less boiler plate code4
- Friendly community4
- Functional Programming Language4
- Spring3
- Official Google Support3
- Latest version of Java2
- Well-compromised featured Java alternative1
Pros of NativeScript
- Access to the entire native api75
- Support for native ios and android libraries47
- Support for javascript libraries46
- Angular 2.0 support46
- Native ux and performance44
- Typescript support37
- Backed up by google and telerik35
- Css support29
- Cross-platform declarative ui and code27
- Fully open source under apache 2.0 license25
- Vuejs support11
- 60fps performance9
- Powerful data visualization with native UI6
- VS Code integration5
- Angular, typescript and javascript support5
- No need for Mac to build iOS apps in Telerik Platform5
- Extended CLI support4
- Cloud builds as part of Telerik PLatform4
- Truly Object-Oriented with Typescript4
- On-device debugging4
- Extensibility4
- Access to entire native api3
- Live reload3
- Easiest of all other frameworks3
- Easy to learn3
- Backed by google3
- 0 day support for new OS updates3
- Publishing modules to NPM3
- Vue.js support out of the box2
- VueJS support2
- Svelte support2
- Powerfull mobile services as part of Telerik Platform2
- Native ui with angular2
- Vue support2
- Playground1
- Hot Reload1
- HMR via webpack1
- Very small app size1
- Write once, use anywhere1
- Easy to use, support for almost all npm packages1
- Rich ecosystem1
- Compile to Apple/Google Stores via CloudCompiler1
- Has CSS ;-)1
- It works with Angular1
- Code reuse with your website1
- Dart0
Pros of React Native
- Learn once write everywhere214
- Cross platform173
- Javascript168
- Native ios components122
- Built by facebook69
- Easy to learn65
- Bridges me into ios development45
- No compile39
- It's just react39
- Declarative36
- Fast22
- Virtual Dom13
- Insanely fast develop / test cycle12
- Livereload12
- Great community11
- It is free and open source9
- Native android components9
- Easy setup9
- Backed by Facebook9
- Highly customizable7
- Scalable7
- Awesome6
- Everything component6
- Great errors6
- Win win solution of hybrid app6
- Not dependent on anything such as Angular5
- Simple5
- Awesome, easy starting from scratch4
- OTA update4
- As good as Native without any performance concerns3
- Easy to use3
- Many salary2
- Can be incrementally added to existing native apps2
- Hot reload2
- Over the air update (Flutter lacks)2
- 'It's just react'2
- Web development meets Mobile development2
- Ngon1
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Cons of Kotlin
- Java interop makes users write Java in Kotlin7
- Frequent use of {} keys4
- Hard to make teams adopt the Kotlin style2
- Nonullpointer Exception2
- Friendly community1
- Slow compiler1
- No boiler plate code1
Cons of NativeScript
- Lack of promotion5
- Slower Performance compared to competitors1
Cons of React Native
- Javascript23
- Built by facebook19
- Cant use CSS12
- 30 FPS Limit4
- Slow2
- Generate large apk even for a simple app2
- Some compenents not truly native2