Flutter: An Rapid Development SDK for Developers

From Google and Community

Flutter is a UI SDK (Software Development Kit) for creating fast, beautiful, natively compiled applications for mobile, web, and desktop. It builds an app with one programming language and a single codebase. It is free and open-source. It was initially developed by Google in May 2017 and now manages by ECMA standards. That is a mobile framework that uses Dart programming language for creating an application. The Dart programming shares several same features as other programming languages, such as Kotlin and Swift, and can be trans-compiled into JavaScript code. It is used to develop applications for Android, iOS, Linux, MAC, Windows and Google Fuchsia. 

Flutter is cross-platform and mainly optimized for 2D mobile apps that can run on both Android and iOS platforms. We can also use it to build full-featured apps, including camera, storage, geolocation, network, third-party SDKs, and more.

Brief History:-

The first version of Flutter was known as codename “Sky” and ran on the Android operating system. It was unveiled at the 2015 Dart developer summit.

1. Flutter 1.0. On December 4, 2018, Flutter 1.0 was released at the Flutter Live event, denoting the first “stable” version of the Framework.
2. On December 11, 2019, Flutter 1.12 was released at the Flutter Interactive event.
3. On May 6, 2020, the Dart SDK in version 2.8 and the Flutter in version 1.17.0 was released, where support was added to the Metal API, improving performance on iOS devices (approximately 50%), new Material widgets, and new network tracking tools.

Features of Flutter SDK:-

1. Open-Source

Flutter is a free and open-source framework for building mobile applications.

2. Cross-platform development

This feature allows Flutter to write the code once, maintain and can run on different platforms. It saves the time, effort, and money of the developers.

3. Hot Reload

Whenever the developer makes changes in the code, then these changes can be seen instantaneously with Hot Reload. It means the changes immediately visible in the app itself. It is a very handy feature, which allows the developer to fix the bugs instantly.

4. Accessible native features

This feature allows the app development process easy and delightful through Flutter’s native code, third-party integration, and platform APIs. Thus, we can easily access the SDKs on both platforms.

5. Minimal Code

Flutter app is developed by Dart programming language, which uses JIT and AOT compilation to improve the overall start-up time, functioning and accelerates the performance. JIT enhances the development system and refreshes the UI without putting extra effort into building a new one.

6. Widget

The Flutter framework offers widgets, which are capable of developing customizable specific designs. Most importantly, Flutter has two sets of widgets: Material Design and Cupertino widgets that help to provide a glitch-free experience on all platforms.

7. Compatibility

Because widgets (and then rendered for those widgets) are part of your app, not the platform, no “compat libraries” are needed. Your apps will not only work, but they will work the same on recent OS versions — Android Jelly Bean and newer and iOS 8.0 and newer. This significantly reduces the need to test apps on older OS versions. Plus it is likely that your apps will work on future OS versions.

8. Performance

This is yet another point in favour of Flutter. When implemented correctly, Flutter apps exhibit great performance, with smooth scrolling and animations. This is largely due to the power of the Flutter engine. This level of performance is unmatched by other cross-platform frameworks, that don’t control the rendering pipeline in the way Flutter does.

9. Testing

Writing tests gives us confidence that our code works as intended, and we don’t introduce bugs and regressions as we make changes. Flutter offers some great support for testing, in the form of unit, widget and integration tests.

Applications of Flutter SDK:-

1. It is used for iOS app development and Android app development from a single codebase.
2. Do more with less code, even on a single OS, with a modern, expressive language and a declarative approach.
3. Prototype and iterate easily.
4. Experiment by changing code and reloading as your app runs (with hot reload).
5. Fix crashes and continue debugging from where the app left off.
6. Create beautiful, highly-customized user experiences.
7. Benefit from a rich set of Material Design and Cupertino (iOS-flavor) widgets built using Flutter’s own framework.
8. Realize custom, beautiful, brand-driven designs, without the limitations of OEM widget sets.