Flutter - A Primer

Flutter - A Primer

Flutter is a tool that allows you to build native cross-platform (iOS, Android) apps with one single code base and programming language.

Components

Flutter consists of two main separate tools, an SDK(Software Development Kit) and a framework widget library. The SDK does the compilation of code to the native machine code to ease the development process, while the widget library as the name suggests is a library of UI widgets to make UI development a walk in the park.

UI to CODE

In Flutter, there is nothing like drag and drop, instead, there is the conversion of UI designs to CODE. Theses codes are done by composing widgets from the widget library and custom made ones that can be styled and placed in a very simple way.

The widget library also includes utility functions that aids development processes. The Flutter SDK is responsible for the conversion of the written codes into cross platform-agnostic mobile applications.

Development in Flutter is done using Dart, which is an object-oriented programming language developed and maintained by Google focused on frontend (mobile, apps, web) user interface development.

Flutter is not Dart, and Dart is not Flutter

Flutter is a framework built on top of Dart and they work hand in hand with each other. Flutter consists of a set of tools that compiles codes (widgets and features) written in Dart to native Android/iOS applications.

Selling Point

It increases efficiency and improves productivity by using a single codebase for both Android/iOS development. It also converts to native code using the SDK which helps it to manipulate the pixels on the host device instead of recompiling to native UI components. This gives room for plenty of UI controls and a huge amount of creativity, hence, why it is possible to build cross-platform beautiful apps with flutter with ease.

Conclusion

There have been technologies that solve similar problems that Flutter is solving, but the way Flutter solves it is totally unique, like the saying: approach matters.

In Flutter, we convert UI to code, and the SDK through Dart ensures that pixels are manipulated instead of compiling to native UI components.