Flutter: Google’s Most Ambitious Framework

Harshu Incorporation
6 min readJan 21, 2020

--

Harshu Incorporation

19th Century was about the Industrial Revolution. The 20th Century was about Science and Engineering. And the 21st Century is all about Technology. The era in which we are living right now is called the Digital Age.

Today Technology is everywhere. From the Smartphone that is in your pocket to the Smartwatch that is on your wrist right now. Today Televisions are Smart, Refrigerators are smart, Air Conditioners are smart, even the car you are driving is also smart.

Since our every devices are smart and connected with each other, we need ONE PLATFORM FOR ALL DEVICES. Whether its our Smartphone, Smartwatch, Smart TV, Smart AC, Smart Car, Smart Home Products, One Platform for all of Them….

This idea is really similar to the terminology Write Once Run Everywhere, which is introduced in the late 70s. The first languages based on this terminology were Java and Python.

Since then every major company tried to release their platforms based on this terminology whether it is Ionic, React Native, Xamarin, PhoneGap or any other framework. On May 2017, Tech Giant Google Introduced one framework named Flutter which is capable of delivering native Android and iOS apps from a single code base. This was an alpha release of Flutter.

So you might have some Questions that commonly arise when anyone thinks to switch from React Native to flutter.

  • If React Native is pretty dominating in the market right now then why you should give a chance to flutter ??
  • If every major company including Facebook, Instagram, Bloomberg, Uber, Skype, and Wix uses React Native then why you should give a chance to Flutter ??
  • On Big Job Portals including Nokri.com, Indeed.com, Careerbuilder.com, Dice.com, and Monster.com, there are hundreds of jobs available for React Native developers but still, very less amount of jobs are available for flutter developers then why you should give a chance to flutter ??
  • React Native is based on the most popular tech stack JavaScript, So tutorials and community support are amazing for JavaScript, and there are lots of JavaScript developers already available in the market then why you should invest your time in learning a pretty unknown language Dart for developing apps on flutter ??
  • React Native is here from quite some time. So the support for react native is amazing on community sites like Stack Overflow, Quora and over the internet.

So if everything is fine with React Native why you should give a chance to flutter ?? So now Let me give the answer to your WHY ?

1. Just like others, Flutter is not just for Android and iOS

  • After the 1.0 release, flutter is evolving really fast. On the 1.0 release, it was only used for targeting Android and iOS just like others.
  • But with the release of Flutter 1.5, flutter team amazed everyone. They officially announced that from now, flutter will not only available for Android and iOS, but it will also available for Web, Desktop, and Embedded devices. Yaa they are in Preview right now, that means they are gonna launch it really soon.
  • So if you learn flutter you will become One Man Army, because from just one framework you will able to target every major platform. You just need to master one framework. Just imagine the power that flutter gives you. 🔥
  • If you wanna develop for Web flutter is here to help you.
  • If you wanna develop Native Android and iOS apps flutter is here to help you.
  • If you wanna develop apps for Windows, macOS, or Linux flutter is available for you.
  • And at the end, if you wanna develop apps for embedded devices such as smartwatches and smart home products, here also flutter is available for you.

2. Fuchsia OS: The Most Powerful beast in the Game.

  • The second and the most amazing reason to learn flutter is that in future Entire App development in Fuchsia will be done in a flutter.
  • We all know that Google is working on a really secret Operating System named Fuchsia.
  • Only the Core Google team knows the real power of Fuchsia OS. But there are really strong rumors that Fuchsia will be the cross-platform OS. That means whether it will mobile, desktop, or embedded devices, ONE OS EVERYWHERE.
  • And for developing apps for Fuchsia, Flutter is the way for you. And as of rumors, if fuchsia is the successor of Android then you can only imagine the wider market and high demand for flutter developers that will be coming in the next couple of years. So that’s why learning flutter really worth of your time.

3. Faster App Development

  • Another important reason for learning flutter is the development speed that it provides to you.
  • While designing the flutter framework, Google developers have a one really big advantage and challenge. They have almost 10 years of experience in App Development. So they know every pain and problem that comes in the traditional native app development.

Having experience and knowledge of the market problems is their advantage. But how to overcome those problems and create a framework that makes app development faster was a big challenge.

  • Today You Just ask any developer who codes one or two apps in a flutter that how fast it is to create apps in a flutter. He/she will tell you only one thing that no one can beat flutter in faster app development.

4. The Partnership of Dart and Flutter team

  • Dart is a language created by Google. And also Flutter is created by Google. In Google, both teams work together to optimize dart for flutter and Fuchsia.
  • With the recent versions of the dart, you can understand how dart team is working hard to optimize the language for Flutter. This is a really big advantage for Flutter that dart team is always there to help them in making flutter more powerful and feature-rich. None of the frameworks have this kind of advantage. That makes flutter more Powerful and Unique from others.

5. Features of Flutter

  • And Finally, let’s discuss the features of flutter. Flutter has four main features.
  1. Stateful Hot Reload
  2. Beautiful Apps
  3. Productive
  4. High Performance

let’s discuss each topic in detail.

Stateful Hot Reload

  • Flutter provides you stateful hot reload. If you have experience with the native app development then you must know how much time-consuming it is to compile the whole app.
  • But flutter provides you the facility of stateful hot reload. So in just fraction of seconds, you can view your changes. Just like in web development you refresh the webpage to see your changes, the same concept goes here.
  • For providing stateful hot reload flutter uses Dart Virtual Machine in debug mode builds to quickly inject new code.

Beautiful Apps

  • You can give any look you want from a design language of your choice. Flutter supports both Material Design and Cupertino Based Widgets. So apps build with flutter are naturally beautiful, you will not need much of the hard work to make them beautiful.

Productive

  • Flutter has rich-set of in-built function that will make your development faster and sweeter.
  • It has a rich set of widgets that will make your life easier and your development faster. Just try it once, you’ll love the crazy power that flutter gives you right in the box.

High Performance

  • For rendering widgets, Flutter uses its own high-performance 2D rendering engine named Skia.
  • With the help of Skia, flutter is able to provide performance over 60fps. So your animations look smoother, and your UI behaves naturally faster.

So I hope you get the answer to your WHY FLUTTER?? But still If you have any questions please feel free to ask me. And If I misses something please tell me that, I’ll love to learn from you. And believe me learning flutter will be one of the best choices you ever make.

--

--

Harshu Incorporation

Harshu Inc. is a Missionary Tech Company that aims to create solutions via technology for Humanity.