Source
r/PinoyProgrammer•
grifter__

Mobile Development - Would you use flutter for your mobile app?

discussion

The primary selling point of flutter is to have one code base that can be compiled and deployed to specific platform (IOS, android, windows, web and desktop) which I am inclined to push forward as a CTO for a small company as I want to avoid multiple code base for the same software and hiring different developers that are specific to a given platform. My only concern are the following:

  1. Hiring developers that are into Dart language
  2. Limitation of the Dart language

Why should I not use flutter?

Posted May 8, 2023, 4:13 AM UTC

1110
reddit04029•

If your system requires access to your phone a lot, like images, camera, bluetooth, etc. Then native development using Swift and Kotlin should be the primary go-to. You can still achieve those by bridging Dart code and native code. But based on experience, Flutter is just meh when handling images.

But if it's just a simple CRUD app, nothing too special, then Flutter can definitely serve your needs.

13
grifter__OPweb•

Thanks for the feedback. Right now we are just looking for CRUD ops and some images for thumbnails but may consider if we need good ops in image quality.

1
franz_see•

Imho, you dont hire Dart developers. You hire flutter developers 😁

You dont need a lot anyway. Just one or two should be good enough for early stage startups

When should you go native? - when you're doing something complex or something that needs specific hardware stuff.

When should you go react native / native script? - when you want to deploy changes faster (without user having to update their mobile apps) and performance is not that important

4
rmyworld•

If you're planning to have an SEO-driven presence on the Web, Flutter isn't a great idea. Its support for Web basically just stuffs everything on a canvas element, not something crawlers can read and index. So it's not great for building websites.

If your focus is more on just having people use the Android and iOS app or game, it's great for that purpose. Though, Flutter is a bit slow on adopting new iOS features, as they have to rebuild everything for every new iOS feature released.

2
grifter__OPweb•

Thanks! We are focus on the mobile for now and not on web. I have to look into if we can embed the flutter as widget since SEO typically reads the header metadata.

1
sabreclaw000•

What kind of features will you be accessing on the phones? will you actually be using any mobile features or is your app something that can be done with a web app?

If you're accessing mobile features you can also check out progressive web apps which allow you to access a lot of mobile features already, https://whatpwacando.today/

1
solidad29•

Just to add, while PWAs are great it's not your typical way toward making a mobile app. Prefer pa din ng users to download yung app mo from the app store.

But then again, you have capacitor.js if that ever happens.

1
grifter__OPweb•

I agree. My user experience on PWA on mobile are not great especially when integrating with security features provided by mobile platform.

1
[deleted]•

flutter developers are expensive and mabilis sila lumipat ng company kasi hot skills?

1
ProgrammAndRecruitrecruiter•

As advantages of going with a cross-platform architecture, you should also consider the features in the long run. Sure, you may be excused from considering this for your POC, but should your CTO bite the idea, he/she'll bite you back with a huge technical debt should you need platform-specific requirements (ie., Camera, etc.,) Of course, the Flutter community is crossing that out, but it's just a matter of time no community solution is available for you.

To add and to confirm, Flutter developers aren't cheap! Okay, it may not cost 2 mobile developers (Java/Kotlin Android developer and Objective-C/Swift IOS developer), but having two Flutter developers (with no IOS background), is so expensive to get a third man that majors with Flutter.

Hate to say this but, my company reverts back to native development from my Flutter MVP. The answer is pretty much simple, performance wins over the one code benefit. By performance (from application start-up, asset management, etc.)

1