What is Flutter?
Flutter is an open-source, cross-platform, app development framework developed by Google. Flutter allows developers to create their applications for multiple platforms such as Android, iOS, Windows, Mac, and Web using a single codebase. This allows developers to provide a consistent app user experience across these platforms and avoid having to develop separate applications for each of these platforms.
Flutter development is done using a new programming language called Dart. Compared to other programming languages like Java, Dart’s syntax is more concise, and Dart is specially geared towards app development.
A flutter app’s basic building block is a widget – i.e., a UI element. In a Flutter app, a simple UI element like a button or textbox to the entire application is a widget. In Flutter, you can build complex widgets from other simpler widgets.
There are many more concepts about Flutter, that I continue to uncover, learn, and use. Flutter’s developer website is a great resource to learn more about them in greater detail.
Why did I choose Flutter?
To develop the app, I had a few options:
1. Develop for Android, using Java.
2. Develop for iOS, using Swift.
3. Develop for Flutter, using Dart.
4. Develop for other x-platform frameworks.
Option# 1 was the most convenient as I recently did Android development in my app development course. Choosing Option #1 or #2 would restrict the app to a single Android or iOS platform. As my goal is to help as many individuals as possible, I soon realized developing the app using an X-platform framework is the way to go. After some research, I realized Flutter is developed by Google and has good support for IDE tools like Android Studio, something that I am already familiar with. It also supports interesting features like hot reloading, making development and testing a lot easier and quicker. There is also good support for 3rd party libraries and packages.
I have started to develop my new app using Flutter and am thoroughly enjoying my experience so far. One key difference when compared to Android development is that Flutter does not support UI creation using XML. The entire UI is created using Dart code. I found creating and manipulating UI using XML and Android Studio to be easier and more intuitive. I am slowly getting used to it and Flutter’s hot re-loading is coming in handy, allowing me to create my UI in Dart and immediately see what it looks like without restarting the app.
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