NOVEMBER 23, 2019

An Overview of Flutter App Development

• 8 Comments
• By: Priyadarshini Nayak
• Android App Development

Flutter 1.0 was officially launched in December 2018, being in beta for a while. However, the mobile development industry is still anxious about Flutter. Understanding this fact, I am going to write a Blog on Flutter that will help you to understand the outline of the same.

Let’s get started!

What is Flutter?

Flutter is a software development kit (SDK) used to build high-performance applications for Android, iOS as well as web and built on a single code base. Flutter is a free yet open-source software development tool that can use to create native-looking Android and iOS apps from the same code base. The foremost objective for the introduction of the Flutter app is to allow developers to bring high-performance apps that feel natural on different platforms, be it Android podium or iOS podium.

Flutter is developed by Google hence, considered as credible. It is made by Dart language (applications are written in Dart), which looks familiar as a language like Java or JavaScript. Therefore even non-programmers can make Flutter apps!

Why should learn Flutter?

Here’s a list of some of the benefits that may make any developer to consider learning Flutter course.

1. High productivity: Since Flutter is cross-platform software (works on multiple operating systems), developers can use the single same code base both for iOS and Android apps. Developers can even achieve great output using less code with a modern, expressive language and on a single operating system. This can absolutely save you both time and resources.

2. High performance: According to Wm Leler, “Flutter is the only mobile SDK that provides reactive views without requiring a JavaScript bridge.” All of this pays the full contribution to fast application startup times and high performance. Dart (Flutter made by language Dart) collects into native code, and Flutter has its widget tree, therefore no requirement to access OEM widgets. This means Flutter technology is capable of having less mediated communication between the app and the platform.

3. Fast and simple development: One of the most praised features of the hot reload is that Flutter allows developers to instantly view the changes made in the code on emulators, simulators, and hardware. And the changed code is reloaded within a fraction of second even though the app running and no need for a restart. So, learning Flutter is great not just for building UIs but also for bug fixing. Flutter also considers simple development as it claims in its docs that programming with Flutter is so easy because no prior programming knowledge is required.

4. Compatibility: Since widgets of Flutter are part of the app and not the platform, hence developers may hardly experience compatibility issues on different OS versions. This, in turn, means even web developers using Flutter spend less time on testing.

5. Open-source and free: Flutter is open-source and free to use, and provide extensive documentation as well as community support to help out with any issues that any developer may encounter.

In addition to these, there are some other advantages of Flutter that help the developers.

• Create beautiful, highly-customized user experiences
• Quick and efficient prototyping
• Hot reload with flutter in Android Studio’s AVD manager on virtual devices to see immediate changes on your app
• Beautiful design for your app by using Material Design and Cupertino
• Easily integrate with Google’s other software products like Cloud Platform, Firebase, etc.

How to get started with Flutter

There are some processes that you need to follow when gets started with Flutter.

Check your System Requirements – Windows users must have Windows 7 SP1 or later (64-bit) with Windows PowerShell 5.0 and Git for Windows pre-installed; whereas Mac OS developers need a 64-bit version with Xcode 9.0 or newer installed. And Linux users don’t have to comply with any special requirements.

Download Flutter Software Development Kit (SDK) – Choose your OS (operating system) and follow the instructions. Though all the operating systems support development both for iOS and Android, you still require a platform-specific editor. And Dart comes pre-installed with Flutter.

Install an Editor – Developers can use any IDE (integrated development environment) app with Flutter command lines, but Google recommends using their plugins for officially supported editors like Android Studio, IntelliJ, and Visual Studio.

Flutter for beginners is the best-recommended app development course to study. VaristorEdu is one of the best platforms where people can join its workshop to learn about Flutter.

Wrap Up

Hopefully, this blog has answered most of your Flutter related questions. Let us know what new technology you’d like to read about next in our series!