React Native, Flutter, and Xamarin are three of the most popular mobile app development frameworks available on the market today. All three of them allow you to write code in JavaScript, which makes the app-building process faster, more efficient, and more portable than ever before. But which one of these is right for you? Let’s take a look at how they differ and see which one would be the best framework to use on your next project.
JavaScript Frameworks
There are many frameworks to choose from when creating a new application, but with Flutter, React Native and Xamarin all vying for top place, what should you consider? Let’s compare three JavaScript frameworks to determine which best fits your needs.
Flutter, React Native and Xamarin are all JavaScript frameworks used to build mobile apps. Flutter is Google’s own framework that lets you create native iOS and Android apps from a single codebase, while React Native lets you build native applications using Facebook’s popular JavaScript library. And lastly, Xamarin brings C# to your mobile applications without requiring any additional downloads or plug-ins.
All three frameworks offer similar components, including layouts, navigation, state management and animations. The main difference between them comes down to their underlying technologies. Flutter uses a compiled version of Google’s Dart programming language, while React Native uses Facebook’s popular JavaScript library and Xamarin relies on Microsoft’s C# programming language with Visual Studio or Visual Studio Code used to write your application logic.
React Native Development
React Native allows developers to use a declarative programming style while creating mobile apps. To understand why React Native is a favorite of developers, you first need to know what declarative programming means.
Declarative programming focuses on what we want to happen and not how it happens, and it’s one of four major programming paradigms: imperative, object-oriented, functional, and declarative. Imperative programmers follow a set of rules or directions to get their jobs done; declarative programmers simply define what they want accomplished and let computers handle the details on how to get there.
React Native is cross platform app development framework created by Facebook to create native mobile apps using JavaScript and React. React Native’s declarative approach lets you design applications using components and data flows; it focuses on code reuse instead of duplicating logic across different platforms. React Native uses native components (instead of WebView) to render graphics and access platform-specific features like geolocation, camera, address book, etc.
Flutter App Development
If you’re a C#, Java, or JavaScript developer looking to build native apps for iOS and Android with a single codebase, Flutter app development may be your answer. Flutter is an open-source SDK created by Google that uses Dart as its programming language, and has been around since 2017. The best part of Flutter app development is that it provides native performance without forcing you to code in Objective-C or Java.
When compared to React Native and Xamarin, Flutter app development has some unique advantages. The first advantage is that it’s a cross-platform solution, so you can write your code once and deploy it to iOS and Android with no additional cost or platform constraints. Second, Flutter app development gives you full control over design because there are no design restrictions imposed by other tools like Storyboard or App Configuration files as seen in other frameworks such as React Native and Xamarin.
Xamarin App Development
Choosing a cross-platform framework can be daunting—there are so many to choose from! But it doesn’t have to be. I’ve built apps using each of these frameworks, and my experience leads me to recommend Xamarin over React Native or Flutter because of its superior tooling, performance, and architecture that will help you get your app up and running quickly while maximizing code reuse across platforms. Let’s dive into why I think you should choose it.
Cross-platform frameworks help accelerate your app development by cutting down on engineering time, but it’s not easy to choose one because there are so many on offer. There are three major options out there—Xamarin, React Native, and Flutter—and they each have their own strengths and weaknesses. Let’s take a look at each one to see which is right for you…
