Flutter just released its first stable version (flutter 1.0) and gave mobile developers a totally amazing and fast way to develop enterprise level applications.
Flutter is a result of hard work put together by the developers inside the Google campus with a motivation to create a truly amazing cross-platform development framework that has never been released before. And not only they developed a product, they made it open source so that others can make use of its power.
As Google continues to contribute to the open source market for mobile development, flutter is by far the most beloved cross-platform mobile development framework available to everyone for free.
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Flutter is by far the Best Framework to develop Cross-Platform Native Mobile Applications
When I first started using Flutter, it was a total mystery for me. Not just the framework but also the language used by Flutter.
Flutter uses Dart for its development. A language developed by Google and very popular inside Google. Google use Dart to develop its web platform. Google Adwords and Adsense are two most widely used platforms developed in Dart.
In my opinion, Dart is a type of language that you probably know already, you just don’t know yet. Dart is a perfect example of a language that lies between Java and JavaScript. It can be used in both flavours. It could be strongly typed as well as loosely typed.
Being a Java Developer and PHP lover at the same time, I love Java’s type safety and PHP’s flexibility. And I found Dart as the best of both worlds.
Dart provides Type Safety and at the same time, it is very flexible. Not only that it also comes with Async support out of the box. Writing asynchronous code feels like a procedural oriented language. With the help of framework and async-await keywords, you can write a pretty awesome and highly readable code that a newbie can understand without much efforts.
Trust me, It is a delight to work with Dart.
I developed my first app in less than 3 hours
When I took flutter for a trial, I was looking to build an application that would fetch blog articles using the rest endpoints and display it to the users.
I made a very basic app with below features:
- The side navigation panel with two links: Home & About.
- A scrollable list view to display article with their cover image, title, and description.
- On clicking any of the blog article, it will expand and the user will be able to read the article.
Even though I was a complete newbie to Flutter, it took me less than 3 hours to develop a fully functioning application. It is really very-very easy with Flutter and Dart.
A Complete New Way to Design User Interfaces
Designing a user always a pain in the ass. Constantly switching between XML and code is a pain. And that pain has been totally removed in Flutter.
I couldn’t have imagined that User Interfaces could be fun to develop.
Flutter has brought a unique way of designing User Interfaces for the people. Maybe not unique, I found it to be inspired by the way Chrome apps are created… But truly effective.
You design user interface components using pure code. No more XML files or HTML integration. Purely developed in Dart. It really motivates me to use Flutter even more. It feels so natural. One language and one framework to conquer the world of mobile application development.
I would like to give you an example of how easy it is to develop interface with Flutter.
class App extends StatelessWidget {
@override
Widget build(BuildContext context) {
return MaterialApp(
title: "My New App",
theme: ThemeData(
primarySwatch: Colors.purple
),
home: AppHomeScreen(),
);
}
}
class AppHomeScreen extends StatelessWidget {
@override
Widget build(BuildContext context) {
return Scaffold(
body: Center(child: Text("Hello World!"))
);
}
}The above code will show a Text at the of the screen saying “Hello World”.
This is just the beginning, you can create almost any layout with the built-in widgets that comes with flutter. And if you are not getting any widget of your needs, you can develop your own. It is very flexible.
You will find tons of articles and Youtube videos about designing just about any UI of your choice. The flutter has made a pretty huge following even before its release. And a lot of people are developing amazing Widget to meet their needs.
Flutter makes it very easy to share widgets and plugins with other developers around the globe.
Flutter Saves Your Development Time With Hot Reload and Restart
It not only makes it easy to develop application for Android and IOS but also it is very fast when it comes to development.
Flutter almost instantly reflects the changes that you have made to the application while maintaining the state at the same time.
As soon as you hit the save button, Flutter detects the changes and compiles the code on the fly. It takes less than 2-3 seconds to reflect your changes on the device. This saves a lot of your development time especially when you are designing the User Interface with real-time data.
Let me show you this in action,
Now, that is a sexy new way to develop mobile applications. Sweet 😉
Flutter is the Leader
You must be thinking that it is quite early to make such a statement but for me, Flutter is the leader when it comes to cross-platform mobile application development.
It is a blessing for the startups. Especially when startups cannot afford to maintain two code bases for the same application just because they are developed for two different operating systems.
From day one, I’m in love with flutter and its widgets. It makes it so simple and easy to develop for both Android and IOS which was never done before this.
I would suggest you take flutter for a spin and see it by yourself. You will never look back from that moment. Here are a few links that will help you to get started and get going: