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Cross Platform Frameworks: Flutter vs Xamarin

by Tech Geekk writer
There is no doubt that cross-platform app development is among the most popular phenomena in the world of programming. Today more and more companies prefer hybrid frameworks over native frameworks. And, with the increasing demand, the cross-platform domain has witnessed a massive surge in the number of frameworks on the market. With many more choices now becoming available, the harder it would be to determine which option is the most appropriate for a given cross-platform development project.

This is because it allows companies to develop apps for different platforms in one go and without the humongous investments. Now, out of the many resources available for such development, Flutter and Xamarin remain the top choices. Xamarin has been in existence for some time and maturity, while Flutter is making rounds that are backed by Google.

Here is a lowdown of what these two frameworks are about and how they are different.

1. Xamarin: An open-source framework, Xamarin is used to create mobile apps with C#. This framework from the house of Microsoft also uses the data binding language XAML.

Pros: 
  • Xamarin gets a thorough ecosystem; developers can leverage .NET, Microsoft Visual Studio, etc. to build top-notch apps.
  • Xamarin gets the hot reload feature which allows developers to make changes to the code in real-time and also have them reflected in real-time.

Cons: 

  • A big drawback of using Xamarin is that if you are planning to build intricate UIs, you will especially struggle with working on features and functionalities specific to each platform.
  • Customizing the apps for the platforms they are meant for can be an onerous task since developers will need to know additional languages such as Java, Objective C, Kotlin, Swift, etc.

2. Flutter: Also an open-source framework, Flutter is renowned for its ability to enable the development of a highly agile UI and to deliver native app-like performance. 

Pros: 
  • This is an open-source framework, i.e. you do not have to pay to use it.
  • Flutter gets a feature called ahead-of-time (AOT) compilation which allows the app to deliver performance that is close to that of a native app.
  • Easily one of the biggest USPs of Flutter is the hot reload feature, which is something it shares with Xamarin.

Cons: 
  • One of the biggest issues with Flutter is that it is decidedly better for the development of Android apps, which is understandable since it is a Google offering after all.
  • An area where Flutter suffers a tad is the availability of third-party libraries which developers can use for further adapting their apps. 

Xamarin vs Flutter

  1. Performance: One of the key considerations while choosing a framework is its performance, of course. As is evident from the above discussion, Flutter fares very well in this context, all thanks to its compilation strategy and abundance of other features and functionalities.
  2. Code reusability: This is yet another department where Flutter does well: it allows one to write code for both Android and iOS while also offering room for tending to platform-specific requirements. Xamarin too is conducive to code reusability, enabling developers to reuse most of the code. Then there is also Xamarin.Forms make code sharing much easier.
  3. Support: Flutter wins this round hands down, thanks to its robust worldwide community of developers. It is also quite friendly for novice developers and plenty of other assistance and material can be found on the interwebs. As for Xamarin, it has a smaller community and limited material for support.

There you have it ladies and gentlemen, a quick overview of what Xamarin and Flutter are all about and how are the two different from each other. This comparison will help you decide if you should opt for Flutter application development services or look for those for Xamarin.

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About Tech Geekk Advanced   writer

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Joined APSense since, March 9th, 2016, From San Jose, United States.

Created on Oct 20th 2021 05:42. Viewed 421 times.

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