> I never really have issues with the JS side of things, care to elaborate on what specifically is "terrible"?
Packages are usually poorly tested (and the fact that it's dynamic language does not help), upgrades are often and painful, the tooling is not very stable in my opinion.
Before settling for Flutter, I've made a limited version of my app in both ecosystem to try both and on the RN one, I already had upgrade issues only after a month...
> Generally what breaks RN is the same stuff that breaks Flutter, native tooling like CocoaPods, Gradle, etc.
You need much less native tooling in Flutter since almost everything is canvas based. Broken stuff on the native part is very rare, I can't really remember anything like this from the past 3 years. I had to upgrade the graddle version once but that's about it.
I have ~30k lines of dart excluding tests and about 15 lines of Kotlin (and zero in ios), that's the kind of ratio we're talking about.
Just in general? I don't know of any packages in my app that are poorly tested. Simply do not choose dependencies that don't meet your standard, whether it's TS or Dart.
> and the fact that it's dynamic language does not help
Most packages nowadays are written with TypeScript or Flow. JS itself is fast and stable thanks to the billions put into the VMs.
> upgrades are often and painful
You don't have to upgrade. In the early days things were more painful, but I've upgraded the past few major React and RN versions with no hassle.
> the tooling is not very stable in my opinion.
Seems stable to me since the last couple years.
Personally the apps that Flutter makes are of worse quality vs RN apps. Emulated native will always feel cheap compared to real OS controls.
> Just in general? I don't know of any packages in my app that are poorly tested. Simply do not choose dependencies that don't meet your standard, whether it's TS or Dart.
In general, it's not really part of the js culture. Sure you have those very nice packages which have stellar dev practices (such as react) but that's far from the norm.
The testing story also feels better with Flutter to me, one nice thing about the canvas based rendering is that you have very good and useful screenshot testing.
> You don't have to upgrade. In the early days things were more painful, but I've upgraded the past few major React and RN versions with no hassle.
If you don't upgrade, you're left behind and it will become more and more painful to upgrade later. Upgrade policies of languages also have to be taken into account for the dev time.
> Personally the apps that Flutter makes are of worse quality vs RN apps. Emulated native will always feel cheap compared to real OS controls.
No mainstream app is using native controls anyways. Facebook doesn't, Twitter doesn't, Whatsapp doesn't...
Additionally, if you have a terrible phone, this is where Flutter stands out in terms of speed. That's why it's so popular in developing countries. On my Galaxy J3 (bottom of the barrel of samsung), my app is the fastest app I have installed.
> In general, it's not really part of the js culture
As opposed to the Dart culture? Quite a sweeping generalization. There's bad packages in every ecosystem. There's really good packages in every system. Pick the right ones.
> one nice thing about the canvas based rendering is that you have very good and useful screenshot testing.
React you can snapshot test the component tree, as well as diff images on each platform.
> If you don't upgrade, you're left behind and it will become more and more painful to upgrade later. Upgrade policies of languages also have to be taken into account for the dev time.
Sure, I update major versions every year or so. Past 2 years of React Native have been easy.
> No mainstream app is using native controls anyways. Facebook doesn't, Twitter doesn't, Whatsapp doesn't...
That's plain false, they for sure do.
> Additionally, if you have a terrible phone, this is where Flutter stands out in terms of speed. That's why it's so popular in developing countries. On my Galaxy J3 (bottom of the barrel of samsung), my app is the fastest app I have installed.
React Native performs well on older devices as well.
> As opposed to the Dart culture? Quite a sweeping generalization. There's bad packages in every ecosystem. There's really good packages in every system. Pick the right ones.
Not every ecosystem is created equal, they are better testing cultures than dart (such as ruby for example) but they are also worse ones and javascript is definitely worse at that.
Packages you install will be on average less tested and less care will be put into the dev experience than in some other languages.
They are exceptions of course such as RN & React but they are far outside the norm.
> Sure, I update major versions every year or so. Past 2 years of React Native have been easy.
As with any other JS project, RN and React are not the main issue but everything around it is and you certainly need extra packages.
> That's plain false, they for sure do.
Have a look at those apps and tell me if they look Material (they don't).
Generally what breaks RN is the same stuff that breaks Flutter, native tooling like CocoaPods, Gradle, etc.