What is Flutter?
Flutter is an open-source UI software development kit created by Google. It allows developers to build natively compiled applications for mobile, web, and desktop from a single codebase written in Dart. It's an excellent tool for creating beautiful and high-performance mobile, web, and desktop apps. It uses the power of C++ by using a graphics engine written in C++ called Skia an open-source 2D graphics library developed by Google, for rendering the user interfaces. Flutter's use of Skia allows it to achieve fast and smooth graphics performance on multiple platforms.
Why Flutter?
Single Codebase, Multiple Platforms
Developers can use a single codebase to create apps that run on multiple platforms, such as iOS, Android, web, and desktop. This reduces development time and effort by avoiding the need to write separate codebases for each platform.
Dart Programming Language
Dart is an object-oriented, strongly typed language developed by Google, that facilitates efficient and flexible app development. Dart language is 2 times faster than javascript,
Performance
The application is compiled to native code, which ensures high performance and fast execution, comparable to applications developed natively for each platform.
Rich Set of Libraries
One of the best things about Flutter is that it comes with a rich set of pre-designed and customizable widgets, allowing developers to quickly implement common UI elements and app functionality.
Community Support
Flutter has a large and active community of developers, due to which there are plenty of resources, packages, and plugins available to extend the functionality of your apps want to use machine learning? try the ml_algo package developed by the ml-algo.com community, or if you want to integrate the game you made in Unity inside Flutter try flutter_unity_widget to know about more exciting packages developed by the community visit pub. dev who knows maybe one day you develop your package and post it.
Integration with Firebase
Flutter integrates well with Firebase, Google's mobile and web app development platform, providing various services like authentication, cloud storage, databases, and more, earlier developers had to setup Firebase for IOS, android and web manually but now you just have to go to Firebase create project and select Flutter, and let Firebase setup itself on your Flutter project.
Hot Reload
Another best thing about Flutter is its Hot Reload feature, allowing developers to make changes to the code and instantly see the results in the app without restarting the whole application.
Flutter vs React Native vs Native development
Cross-platform Development
Offers true cross-platform development, allowing developers to write code once and deploy it on multiple platforms (iOS, Android, web, and desktop), although React Native also supports cross-platform development in some parts of the app may require platform-specific code, which leads to less code sharing.
Performance
Provides native-like performance as the code is compiled to native machine code using the Dart AOT (Ahead-of-Time) compiler. React Native offers good performance but relies on a bridge to interact with native components, which may introduce some overhead, Native development does provide the best performance as apps are built directly using platform-specific languages and tools, but you'll have to learn swift of ios development which requires macOS, kotlin/java for android development and at least Html, CSS, Javascript for web development.
Testing
Easier and more efficient testing due to a single codebase for multiple platforms, In React Native testing efforts, may be increased due to the need to cover platform-specific code, Native development requires separate test suites for each platform, leading to more testing effort.
How do I learn it?
Without a doubt the best resource to learn Flutter is the Flutter Documentation with an extremely user-friendly UI, that doesn't feel overwhelming, you see what you want.
You can check out Angela Yu's course on Udemy this course teaches you Flutter development by building beautiful projects and integration with Firebase one of the best courses for introduction to Flutter.
Some YouTube channels: Flutter YouTube channel, Mitch Koko, FreeCodeCamp
Still not sure?
Don't worry I will be uploading a weekly blog to get started in flutter development, stay tuned we'll be learning Dart on 7th August 2023.