DEV Community

Lucas Augusto Kepler
Lucas Augusto Kepler

Posted on

I Refuse to Learn Flutter — And I Think That's a Mistake

I'll be straightforward: I'm a React Native developer, and everything around me runs on React Native. My job, my university, the local market — it's all React and JavaScript. Flutter barely comes up in conversation.
But I'm not blind. I see Flutter's GitHub activity growing consistently. More stars, more contributors, more packages being published every month. I see companies like Nubank — right here in Brazil — shipping production apps with it. I see the community expanding and the framework evolving fast.
And yet, I still don't feel safe making the jump.
Why the hesitation?
It's not that I think Flutter is bad. It's that my entire professional foundation is built on JavaScript. React Native lets me leverage everything I already know — React patterns, the npm ecosystem, the massive pool of libraries and community answers for virtually any problem I run into.
Dart, on the other hand, feels like starting over. New language, new paradigm, new ecosystem. And when your livelihood depends on being productive and employable, "starting over" isn't just a technical decision — it's an emotional one.
There's also the local market reality. Where I am, React Native dominates the job listings. If I invest months learning Flutter and Dart, will that investment pay off here? Or will I just have a cool side skill that nobody's hiring for locally?

Here's the thing that keeps nagging me: the global trend is clear. Flutter's adoption is climbing. Its GitHub contributions are outpacing React Native. More companies are choosing it for new projects, especially in fintech and design-heavy applications. The framework isn't just surviving — it's gaining serious ground.
And I can't help but wonder if ignoring it is just comfortable short-term thinking. The local market today isn't necessarily the local market two years from now. Technologies shift. The developers who saw React Native coming early had a massive advantage. Am I making the same mistake by not paying attention to Flutter now?

What I actually want to know
If you made the switch from React Native to Flutter — was it worth it? Did Dart feel like a step backward or forward? How long until you felt productive?
If you use both — how do you decide which one to pick for a project?
And if you're in the same boat as me — watching Flutter grow but not quite ready to dive in — what's holding you back?
Let's talk.

Top comments (0)