Mobile application development is estimated to touch $189 billion this year. It has found a corner for itself across all sectors, including gaming, e-commerce, entertainment, banking, and so on.
When we talk about Mobile Application Development, we often hear the terms Flutter, React Native, Swift, Dart, Kotlin, etc. as these are the most emerging and popular terms in the same.
When one plans to develop a mobile application for the business, the biggest challenge that comes in front of him is choosing the right technology to fulfill the purpose. It is the first and the essential step towards the development of a mobile application failing which may result in significant losses.
Best choice for your use:
Therefore it is necessary to do detailed research on all the above-mentioned technologies. All of these technologies have their unique features, pros, cons, etc. and each one of them fits the best to some specific types of applications. Hence, it is essential to understand everything to know which one among them is the best choice for your use.
The internet is flooded with job vacancies for people having expertise in the technologies, as mentioned above, which is proof of the popularity of these technologies.
Businesses and enterprises are looking to Hire Mobile App Developers who are well-versed with Flutter, React Native, Swift or Dart, and so on very desperately. It all is due to the continually growing demand for mobile application development.
Here, in this article, we will discuss Swift and Flutter to understand them in detail, which will help make the right choice among all the available options for the development of a mobile application.
Let us start with a brief introduction to Swift.
Swift – The Introduction:
Swift is a robust and general-purpose programming language developed for macOS, iOS, watchOS, tvOS, and so on. Apple Inc. created it. The syntax of this marvelous programming language is compact but meaningful.
Swift offers a lot of advanced features to attract a large number of developers. Swift is primarily a platform for building native iOS apps.
Native iOS app development has become more appealing due to the introduction of the Swift language. Several excellent tools, documentation, and frameworks are provided by Apple to aid developers in building iOS apps with ease.
The most important and influential features of the Swift language are as under:
- Swift is a relatively safer language as compared to other programming languages like C. Allows developers to write code without committing many errors. And It ultimately saves a lot of time in the long run.
- It allows developers to write quick codes with the help of advanced features and the standard library it has.
- The syntax of Swift is clear and easy to use, which helps developers to learn it quickly.
- There is no need to have a separate library for operations like string handling or input/output.
- Swift offers a more robust error handling as compared to other languages.
Flutter – The Introduction
Flutter is an open-source UI software development kit created by Google to help developers build mobile applications by using the same code base across multiple platforms like Android, iOS, etc.
The platform helps save development time to a large extent by allowing the use of the same code base to develop applications for different platforms. Flutter is entirely different from native Android and iOS development.
However, Flutter facilitates application developers to build mobile applications with the latest features without negotiating their speed and performance. Flutter has enormous community support all over the world, making it easy for developers to adapt and learn quickly.
The essential features of Flutter can be seen under
- Flutter offers faster development of apps due to its hot reload feature that allows developers to see the changes in the app as and when they make any changes to the code. They do not need to wait for minutes for the same.
- It makes use of Dart language, which is a straightforward and powerful language with clean syntax.
Supports several IDEs like Android Studio, Visual Code, IntelliJ, etc. - It allows developers to design attractive user interfaces by creating their widgets, or they can even make modifications to existing widgets to give them a beautiful look.
- With Flutter, developing separate apps for separate platforms is no longer required. Hence, the development cost is reduced to a great extent.
Comparison between Swift and Flutter:
The comparison between both technologies can be seen based on the following points
01. Speed:
Development speed is one of the important to consider when choosing a technology for the development of mobile applications. Flutter takes a little more time for the development of clean builds as compared to Swift.
02. Onboarding process:
The integration process for Swift iOS development requires limited configuration and is more uncomplicated as compared to Flutter.
03. Application reloading:
Application reloading with Flutter is faster as compared to Swift due to the beautiful hot reload feature it has.
04. Accessibility:
Flutter is lacking somewhere in developing applications for people with disabilities. It needs improvement in this area.
05. Testing:
Flutter offers a robust testing system to perform better testing of apps, whereas Swift testing tools lack features like data-driven testing, the grouping of tests, etc.
Final Words:
Looking at the above comparison, we can conclude that both Swift and Flutter are rising technologies that offer a lot of unique features to contribute towards the development of successful, beautiful, and efficient mobile applications, and both of them have some limitations too.
However, most Mobile Application Development Companies are making use of hybrid development platforms these days due to the time and budget constraints for which Flutter is one of the best choices.
Hence, the selection of one between the two majorly depends on your business needs as well as the time and budget constraints associated with the application.
If you are also looking to develop a timely and cost-effective mobile app for multiple platforms using Flutter, then Contact Us!