If you’re looking to create a mobile app, Flutter and Swift both offer a good platform for building apps. These two open source platforms are similar in cost and are suitable for both newbies and experienced developers. In addition, they allow developers to simultaneously develop Android and iOS apps. Let’s see the difference between Flutter vs Swift.
Flutter Vs Swift
Performance
While Swift is the better choice for developers who want to create separate applications for iOS and Android, Flutter is the best choice for beginners and companies on a budget. Flutter provides native-level performance on all platforms and allows for easy customization. It also has a single code base. However, you should note that Flutter is still a bit slower than Swift.
Compared to Swift, Flutter requires less code and comes with a comprehensive testing framework. It has helped developers to create cleaner codes since its inception, and its numerous features make unit testing easy. It also follows a consistent documentation process. On the other hand, Swift uses the native Apple testing tool, XCTest, to run various tests. This testing framework is constantly updated to keep pace with the latest technologies.
Stability
While Flutter is still relatively new to the development scene, it’s already garnering a lot of attention from developers. With a focus on cross-platform development, Flutter is likely to grow in popularity as the development community expands. Flutter’s advantages are many and should not be overlooked as an app development framework.
One of the most important criteria for mobile app development is performance. Swift is the native language of the iOS operating system, which means it will produce better results for mobile applications with heavy graphic effects. On the other hand, Flutter is also capable of giving a good performance, since it uses AOT compliance and a garbage collector to keep its memory usage low. This means Flutter is best for simple apps that don’t require a lot of processing power and don’t require complicated interaction.
UI
The first thing you should know about Swift and Flutter is that both of these frameworks support the @State and @Binding keywords. These keywords are used to apply styles to the text in the view. In Flutter, a text widget is known as a text view and can be styled with the TextStyle widget. Swift also allows you to assign a global state to your app’s views.
One of the main differences between Flutter and Swift is that Flutter has a lot of benefits over Swift, such as declarative UI architecture. Unlike Swift, Flutter is capable of hot reloading and can provide much faster loading. These features will help developers overcome some of the drawbacks of Swift.
Cross-platform development
Flutter is a cross-platform development platform that allows developers to build iOS and Android apps. Its Hot Reload feature updates changes in real time and speeds up the development process. In contrast, a native developer must manually update the simulator to reflect changes. Flutter has a lower learning curve than most development tools and comes with an organized guide.
Flutter is built with Dart, Google’s open-source UI toolkit. It supports web and desktop app development. Developers should know the Dart programming language to work with the framework. Dart is a strongly typed, object-oriented, and null-safe language.
Testing
While both Swift and Flutter have strong support for testing, there are some differences between the two frameworks. Swift has a more comprehensive testing framework, and supports UI, performance, and integration testing. Flutter, on the other hand, uses the Flutter Driver to run tests at the UI and module level. This enables you to write bug-free code right from the start. Moreover, Flutter also has an improved documentation process for cross-platform mobile applications.
Both Swift and Flutter make it easy to profile your iOS apps. Developers can do this through their IDEs or by using the command line. For example, a dynamic analysis of an app using Flutter takes 149 seconds, while a similar test with Swift takes more than four minutes. Developers can also use Xcode to analyze the speed of their apps, but Flutter takes a little longer to build at first, though it does speed up over time.
