Google Flutter and Dart

What Is Flutter?

Flutter is an open-source UI framework for creating high-level native interfaces on Android and iOS. The initial release of Flutter alpha by Google happened in May 2017. Flutter apps can be written in the Dart programming language . The Flutter Beta version was announced by Google in February at the Mobile World Congress 2018.

Dart shares features with many of other languages like Kotlin and Swift and it can be easily transpiled into JavaScript code. Flutter is open source and free to use. It can work with your existing code. As Flutter allows for a reactive and declarative style programming it resembles React Native. There is no need to use a bridge in a Flutter to improve overall performance and startup time. By using Dart it will automatically achieve Ahead-of-Time compilation (AOT).

You will not able to find any differences between an app build in Flutter and other languages. They look the same apps built in other Android SDKs, and, in terms of performance and looks, the only difference is that they also run on iOS devices.

Flutter Core Principles

Flutter has a React-style framework which includes ready to use widgets, development tools, and a rendering engine. These elements all work together to help you design, build, and test your apps.

Every Single Thing Is a Widget in Flutter

The basic building components for Flutter apps are widgets. Moreover, in other frameworks, we have a different set for views, controllers, and other properties. Each and every widget has a fixed declaration for the UI. Flutter has united object model — the widget.

Let’s Have a Look at Some Features That Flutter provides:

• Flutter has its own engine which can render apps on both Android and iOS along with UI components.
• Flutter uses Dart, which is a fast, object-oriented language with features like Minix, isolates, generics, and optional static types.
• Another special aspect of Dart is that it can use Just-In-Time compilation .
• Flutter provides hot reloads by refreshing during development without the need for a completely new build.
• In Flutter, we can develop apps using IntelliJ IDEA, Android Studio, or Visual Studio.
• It is built with an idea of widgets. In Flutter, you can use widgets for screen or app itself.
• With Flutter, you can solve your complex UI challenges with robust and flexible APIs for animation, 2D, effects, gestures, rendering, and more.
• Support for multiple packages like Firebase implementation, sharing content, opening images, accessing sensors, and more.

Why Is Flutter Better Than React Native?

For the better understanding, we can have a look at the architecture of Flutter and React Native .

Let's start with the architecture of React Native.

As you can see from the picture above, React Native is basically divided into two-parts, i.e JavaScript and Native. In React, the application will run the JavaScript and it will communicate with Native through a bridge. This code is then converted into a native app, for example when you are creating animation which is at 60 frames/sec. Then it will become slower due to the communication between JavaScript and native. In every 60 sec, it has to convert code from JavaScript to native and vice versa.

Hence it will end up killing the smoothness of animation. In this application multi-core architectures and applications cannot communicate with the machine.

Flutter provides a lot of flexibility in deciding how to organize and architecture your apps. As we can see clearly from the architecture of Flutter that does not use any bridge because it uses Dart which can handle animation , painting , gestures , rendering and many more by itself. This boost its performance.

But as we all know that perfection and imperfection go hand in hand so we have one in Flutter and Dart, that it doesn’t have a strong developer community to solve your issues.

Flutter Beta 3: Launched by Google I/O 2018 on May 7, 2018

The main focus of Flutter Beta 3 release is – Fundamental , Ecosystem , and Tooling .

• Fundamental– Increased level of customization and complexity.

• Ecosystem – Main attention is that fully featured set of plugins are added to Firebase plugins. Visual studio code has now fully supported environment.

• Tooling– It has redesigned UI with the brand new feature “Just My Widgets,” which filters out the auto-generated widgets for developers, Recently Google has Dart 2 is announced.