Flutter: The UI Toolkit by Google

Flutter: The UI Toolkit by Google

In May 2017 Google announced a new toolkit framework named Flutter for cross-platform development i.e. a framework to develop for platforms like Android, IOS etc.

So now the question arises that since we already have frameworks like Ionic(2013) by Drifty Co., React Native(2015) by Facebook, Xamarin(2011) by Xamarin Inc., Native Script(2014) by Progress, Phone Gap(2009) by Apache Cordova, etc. for cross platform mobile app development then why do we need another framework to develop cross platform application? So now let us try to find out the answer to the question.

But before finding out that why do we need another framework for cross platform development, we first need to understand what is cross-platform app development and why it is needed? So the answer to this is that cross-platform apps development means developing apps that can run on different platforms like Android, IOS, Windows, Linux, Web etc. by using a single codebase and due to cross platform development the reusability of the code is increased and we do not need to learn different languages like java or Kotlin for android and swift or Objective-C for IOS to build platform specific apps, and the other advantage of cross platform development is that it is cheaper also as compared to native app development.

Now let's see why Flutter? So Flutter is basically a cross-platform app development framework to develop apps using Dart an object oriented and strongly typed programming language for any platform available to us. Since Flutter uses Dart as the programming language so it has the feature of Just in Time(JIT) execution i.e. compilation of the code during the execution of the code and it also supports Ahead of Time(AOT) compilation i.e. compilation of the code directly into the native machine level code.

The advantages that we get while using flutter to develop apps are:-

  1. Flutter is easy to set up and start coding on low-end machines. You don’t need to be worried that your operating system won’t be able to handle Flutter, and like other mobile app development frameworks which use the Android Studio (a really heavy IDE for mobile app development) for android and XCode for IOS, flutter can be easily integrated with VS Code(a light weight and easy to use text editor) for developing applications.

  2. Since Flutter uses AOT so the application can directly and easily communicate with the native platform i.e. android or IOS as compared to React Native that uses the JavaScript bridge to communicate with the platform so due to this the performance and startup time of any complex application is increased and the app runs smoothly.

  3. Flutter also supports Hot Reload feature since it has Just in time compilation and due to this the developers can build an application instantly like building a web page and can see changes immediately, the hot reload is a stateful feature i.e. we do not need to restart the app every time when a new change is app implemented we can easily see the change by just hot reloading the app.

  4. If starting a startup then Flutter can be considered as a perfect framework for creating an MVP(Minimum Viable Product) since it uses a single codebase and also the app will look same on both the IOS and Android Platform and its also cheaper as compared to native app development.

At last as we always see that developers often need to compromise between productivity and quality to develop apps as they need to develop separate apps for separate platforms and it turned towards cross platform or hybrid apps solution then they fail to deliver native app experience and the users of the app also does not like the app, so Flutter was developed by Google with a view to bridge all these gaps.