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agentifysh 3 days ago

saying Expo is "free" is disingenuous. sure, you can self-hosts and duct-tapep pipelines together on-prem, but at that point you're just paying in devops hours (https://github.com/expo/expo/issues?q=is%3Aissue%20state%3Ao...) instead, something which is not part of flutter DX

your comparison for web is a lazy trope. If a Flutter app is invisible to VoiceOver, thats on the developer for ignoring the semantics tree, not the framework

ironically, your point on React Strict DOM actually shows how much of a mess RN web approach is. Flutter solved cross-platform consistency at the engine level years ago while React is still trying to force the DOM to behave.

I much prefer a compiled language than the runtime uncertainty of RN. composing native views sounds ideal until an iOS update changes and breaks your layout, or JS bridge chokes during a complex animation edge case that will get you digging through github issues. Flutter is rendering natively on the GPU without the overhead. I prefer shipping a consistent app over debugging why some react-native-* is dropping frames on a budget phone because of JS thread

Overall, I find your blatant marketing advertisement of Expo, very suspicious, digging through your past comments I see similar promotion of Expo and RN. You can see Expo's pricing (https://expo.dev/pricing#plan-features) which clearly shows its a classic open-core funnel scheme to get developers to build dependence and end up paying for build credits

tcoff91 3 days ago | parent [-]

Those github build issues you've linked have nothing to do with funneling people to EAS Build. EAS build doesn't make your builds more reliable than just using fastlane and building on your own infra. Most build issues are due to react-native itself and when you have those issues it fails in EAS build as well. Giving Expo money doesn't save you from any of the build issues that plague React Native.

I have years of experience building react-native apps that use Expo in CircleCI and making them available to developers in our company with Diawi without paying Expo a dime.

Saying that I'm 'suspicious' because I have a good opinion of the technology I use in my day job at a SaaS company is ridiculous.

Is it great that Flutter probably has 10x less build issues than React Native? Yeah it is. A lot of things about Flutter's DX are better than React Native. But the fact is that you can produce a way better web app with React Native Web than you can with Flutter unless complex game-esque 2d graphics are the focus of your experience.

If you rebuilt twitter's website with Flutter (it's currently react-native-web) it would 100% be a worse experience.

It's not fair to blame accessibility issues on devs and just say it's a skill issue when other frameworks give you a baseline level of accessibility for free.