You’re an experienced app developer and have made the decision to create apps for iOS or Android. You might be unsure which platform is best for you if you are a beginner. These are the technologies that you need to learn in order to become a cross-platform or mobile app developer. Flutter is an excellent choice no matter where you are in your app development journey. This guide will introduce Flutter to you, discuss the pros and cons of Flutter, as well as show you what you can do with Flutter’s open-source software development tool.
What is Flutter?
Flutter by Google is an open-source UI toolkit that allows you to create beautiful native user interfaces from a single codebase. So, Flutter apps can be run on Android, iOS and the web.
Dart is the basis of Flutter’s framework. So, Dart is an object-oriented programming language. You can easily pick it up using your JavaScript knowledge.
Although it was originally designed for creating cross-platform apps, Flutter 3.0 now allows you to create desktop and Web applications.
What can you create with Flutter?
Flutter 2.0 has been released. You can now create the following:
- Cross-platform mobile apps available for Android and iOS
- Web apps include Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) and single-page apps (SPAs) as well as the expansion of Flutter mobile apps for the web
- Desktop apps (Windows, Mac, and Linux) with Flutter 3.0
What makes Flutter unique?
Your code will be processed through a bridge that converts your code to a JavaScript Webview. Flutter renders apps directly, instead of being rendered by the platform. So, Flutter only needs a canvas to render widgets and access services like tap.
Flutter targets the ARM device’s ARM by compiling code into native ARM code using Dart’s support of just-in-time or ahead-of-time compilation. So Flutter apps are extremely responsive and consistent because of this.
Flutter: The pros and cons
Let’s now look at the pros and cons to Flutter for cross-platform app creation.
Pros
Here are some reasons Flutter is rapidly gaining popularity with cross-platform frameworks like NativeScript, Xamarin and React Native.
Flutter consistency
Flutter’s greatest draw is its ability to write once and run anywhere. Flutter doesn’t require you to maintain consistency across Android, iOS and the web. It is possible to build faster, save resources, and make maintenance easier with one codebase. Hire an app development company, they can provide the best app development services.
Hot reloads
High developer velocity is possible with stateful hot reload. Flutter provides instant UI updates when code changes are made. The just-in-time compiler makes this possible.
Support for the community
Flutter is currently ahead of React Native when it comes to GitHub stars. This indicates that developers are more likely to embrace Flutter than React Native.
Additionally, React Native had more questions about Flutter than Stack Overflow. This suggests that Flutter is a popular topic among developers.
Open source
Flutter is an open source framework. This means that you have access to the original codebase. You can contribute, file issues and help the Flutter project. The open source community has been instrumental in some of the most significant advances in software development.
Faster app development
Flutter makes it easy to create cross-platform apps. Flutter’s built-in widgets make it easier to develop, test, and fix issues faster. Flutter can be used to quickly prototype and develop MVPs.
Great documentation
Flutter is well-known for its outstanding documentation. Flutter documentation is well-organized and well-formatted. This makes it easy for developers to create Flutter apps.
Widgets that can be customized
Nearly everything in Flutter, from the layout to colors to text to buttons, is basically a widget. This is similar to components in React. Flutter offers a variety of widgets that can be customized.
Only need to be familiar with Dart
Dart can be used to develop apps for any platform. So, Dart is the language that Flutter uses to create apps.
Dart is a powerful programming language. It’s simple, strong-typed, object-oriented, and offers null safety. This means that values cannot be null unless they are explicitly stated.
Dart supports both just-in time (JIT), and ahead-of–time (AOT), compilation. JIT allows for hot reloads. The app code is compiled and run immediately. Flutter is extremely fast thanks to AOT compilation. This allows code to be compiled to native ARM code.
Support for desktop and web
Flutter 3.0 supports both desktop and the web. Flutter developers now have the ability to build for both mobile and web using a single codebase. Because you have access to more end users, support for the web is a huge win. With the release of version 3.0, Flutter supports all desktop platforms including Linux and macOS.
Flutter 3.0 now includes accessibility features for desktop versions of Windows, macOS and Linux. This includes a screen recorder and sufficient contrast.
Compiles to native ARM Code
Flutter is a cross-platform mobile development framework that compiles code to native ARM code. This makes it more performant than other cross-platform mobile platforms like React Native or Xamarin.
Flutter 3.0 has been introduced and macOS desktop apps can now be created as universal binaries on Macs with Intel or Latest Apple Silicon processors.
Flutter DevTools
FlutterDevTools – including hot refresh and code formatter as well as widget inspector — will help you develop and debug faster. The widget inspector allows you to navigate between the pixels of the device, the widget tree and the line that created the widget.
Cons
There are few disadvantages to Flutter when compared to the many benefits it offers for cross-platform app development. It is important to consider the limitations and relative maturity of each framework when choosing the best framework for your project.
Here are some possible drawbacks to be aware of.
Emerging framework
Although Flutter is gaining popularity among cross-platform developers, it’s still a new framework. This is why there are not many plugins or packages and limited resources.
As new capabilities are added to the native SDK for iOS and Android, Flutter can take some time.
Limited plugins/packages
Flutter is less popular than React Native due to the limited number of available plugins and packages. This is normal for a relatively new framework. The first stable Flutter version was released a few years ago.
As Flutter developers continue to build more plugins and packages, this restriction should decrease in impact. There are currently more than 26K packages that can be used to create Flutter apps. This number is constantly growing.
App size
Flutter uses built-in widgets instead of platform widgets. The resulting app is usually larger. Larger apps take longer to download and take up much more space on a phone’s memory.
The Flutter app can be reduced in size by using specific libraries and packages, asset compression and removing unused resources.
Smaller Dart community
Comparable to JavaScript, Dart is used for Flutter app development and has a small developer community. This means that there are not many resources available to help you learn Dart, just like the Flutter framework.
Flutter: Should You Use It?
Given its one-codebase-for-all-platforms approach, I believe Flutter will play a major role in the advancement of app development for all supported platforms. If you don’t know how to create cross-platform apps using Flutter, it is worth learning.
Flutter allows you to play multiple roles, including as a web and mobile developer. You can create a single codebase which compiles to native code and treats the device like a platform.
Flutter draws inspiration from React, the web and other sources so that apps created with Flutter can be used on any platform. This is similar to adaptive/responsive web design.
