What is Flutter?

The Beginning of a Flutter Era

With the rise of mobile app development, Flutter has emerged as a crucial success factor for various business niches across the globe. This cross-platform UI toolkit was initially launched by YC in 2013, but in May 2017, Google officially acquired and launched it to the world.

Thanks to its Google roots, Flutter started to rapidly gain popularity and support one of the most vibrant communities of developers. Flutter is open-source, adding even further to the warm reception it has enjoyed ever since it was launched. It allows developers to build cross-platform applications that run seamlessly across different operating systems and devices. With Flutter, it is now possible to build natively compiled Android and iOS apps that share the same codebase. This eliminates the need to write platform-specific code for an app.

Over 2 million developers are now using Flutter to build feature-rich and highly functional cross-platform apps. And in a recent announcement from the Flutter team, Flutter is now expanding its reach to include not only consumer apps but also enterprise-grade applications.

How Flutter is Different from Other Tools

In the days of yore, Objective C/Swift and Java/Kotlin were the primary mobile app development languages, and building an app was difficult as well as expensive. For businesses targeting the two primary mobile OSs that rule the market, the client had to commission builds of two separate apps, one for Android and one for iOS. Not only did this mean 2x grunt work but also 2x costs.

Flutter has by now solved this issue effectively. Several similar frameworks are also cross-platform, yet Flutter is still the framework of choice for the tech-savvy client developers, enterprises, users, and entrepreneurs.

In short, Flutter is like a treasure trove for cross-platform app development that offers a wide array of tools, APIs, frameworks, libraries, and documentation to create a fully-functional app.

Key Advantages of Flutter

Without any doubt, Flutter has built a robust reputation as a portable and extensible UI toolkit to build near-native apps for web, desktop, and mobile platforms. It uses Dart as its programming language along with Cupertino widgets and Material Design. With Flutter development services, you can now create exquisite UI that has the same look and feel like native apps. It functions optimally across platforms while using a single codebase for every project.

Flutter is also the only framework with a core mobile SDK that offers responsive, stylistic elements without requiring a JavaScript bridge. This results in enhanced levels of performance that easily outmatches its competitor, React Native. You can easily integrate Flutter with Android, iOS, Linux, Windows, as well as Fuchsia applications for amazing and seamless performance.

It is noteworthy that Google itself deploys Flutter for the UI of the Google Home Hub and numerous modules of the Google Assistant. Flutter is also the platform of choice for eCommerce businesses like eBay, Alibaba, and Groupon.

The Technicality of Flutter and How It Works

With all its advantages and bright sides, have you ever wondered how Flutter works? For that, let's take Flutter apart to understand its technicality.

The Flutter SDK aims at replacing vanilla JavaScript by running on Dart - a programming language developed by Google itself. Dart programs can run directly on a server, and as for browser runtimes, the Dart2JS transcompiler converts dart programs to JS.

Fuchsia apps (another one of Google's platforms) are also developed in Dart. The programming language's structure is quite similar to other object-oriented programming languages, which has resulted in the mass adoption of Flutter and Dart by the global developer community.

Flutter's massive community of developers around the globe consistently churns out high-value code examples and blueprints that help newbies craft intuitive and appealing cross-platform applications.

The primary component of Flutter is its widget-based technology. This facilitates the application of OOP to any element the developer happens to be working upon. One of the primary benefits of Flutter (through Dart) is that it allows developers to tweak and customize pre-built widgets easily and effectively, resulting in fast development times and a truly attractive UI that surpasses all benchmarks of application design quality and appeal.

As mentioned above, Flutter has a massive competitive advantage, thanks to its widgets. By combining different widgets, developers can place components (drag-and-drop) and build a fully functional responsive UI. In Flutter's widget library, each widget comprises ready-to-use structural elements like buttons or menus, design elements like color schemes and font colors, and layout aspects like padding and aspect ratios.

One particularly interesting thing about Flutter is that it does not use OEM (original equipment manufacturer widgets) but offers programmers ready-made widgets that look exactly like native Android or iOS apps. It also offers developers the ability to build custom widgets from scratch.

Yet another advantage of Flutter is that it provides developers a reactive-style view. By using Dart instead of deriving from compiled languages for a JavaScript bridge, Flutter easily circumvents performance issues that may arise. And the AOT (Ahead of time) compilation of Dart into native code speeds up Flutter apps even further.

This allows Flutter to easily communicate with the specific platform it is running on without requiring a switch in context between the realms of JavaScript and Native. And this, in turn, means that you can efficiently boost the app start-up time.

In Summation

Flutter stands a class apart when it comes to the solution of offering iOS and Android development capabilities without the need for a separate codebase for each OS/platform. It is unquestionably one of the best cross-platform frameworks that can help you create smartphone-compatible apps that function as true native apps. Considering Google's continuous support and its soaring popularity in just a few years, we can say that Flutter is definitely here to stay in the long run.

In the new normal, Flutter stands as the numero-uno cross-platform development framework, with enterprises and individual developers alike clamoring to add it to their tech quiver.