FLUTTER
Published: 2024-07-01 12:33:13


I started learning Flutter during a long vacation from school. I've always wanted to learn it and used the break to do so. I heard about Flutter from a friend who is a pro at it, and I’m glad I started. It's been a year since I began, and I love it. I would like to continue learning and striving to acquire more knowledge.
A mobile development platform is a collection of tools, services, and technologies that enable developers, or even non-developers, to design, develop, test, deploy, and maintain mobile applications across different platforms, devices, and networks. It facilitates the seamless implementation and integration of various features into applications.
Flutter is a distinctive mobile development platform. It is an open-source framework created and maintained by Google, designed for building visually appealing, natively compiled, multi-platform applications from a single codebase. Flutter simplifies and accelerates the development of beautiful apps for mobile and beyond. With Flutter, you can build any type of cross-platform app. The framework uses Dart, a programming language developed by Google in 2011. Dart is a typed object-oriented language focused on front-end development, similar to JavaScript.
The Google-built framework consists of these components:
Software Development Kit (SDK)
An SDK is a set of tools that helps developers build their applications, allowing them to compile code into native machine code for both iOS and Android. Flutter, a framework with a core mobile SDK, offers responsive and stylistic elements without requiring a JavaScript bridge. It seamlessly integrates with Android, iOS, Linux, Windows, and Fuchsia applications, delivering exceptional performance.
Widget-based UI Library
This framework has various UI elements that can be reused, including sliders, buttons, and text inputs. Flutter provides ready-made widgets for almost all common app functions. Flutter provides a rich set of pre-designed widgets that you can customize to create beautiful interfaces. These widgets are not simple UI elements like buttons and text boxes. They include complex widgets like scrolling lists, navigations, sliders, and many others. These widgets help save you time and let you focus on the business logic of your application.
Advantages of Flutter Framework
1. Single Codebase for Multiple Platforms:
Develop apps for iOS, Android, web, and desktop using a single codebase, significantly reducing development time and effort.
2. Fast Development with Hot Reload:
The hot reload feature allows developers to see changes instantly without losing the application state, enhancing productivity and speeding up the development process.
3. Rich Set of Pre-designed Widgets:
Flutter offers a comprehensive library of customizable widgets, enabling the creation of beautiful and responsive UIs with minimal effort.
4. High Performance:
Flutter compiles to native machine code, providing high performance and smooth animations, comparable to native apps.
5. Expressive and Flexible UI:
With a layered architecture, Flutter allows for high customization and quick iteration on designs, giving developers full control over every pixel on the screen.
6. Seamless Integration:
Easily integrates with existing iOS and Android codebases and can be embedded into existing apps, offering flexibility and adaptability.
7. Support for Various Development Tools:
Compatible with popular development tools like Visual Studio Code, Android Studio, and IntelliJ, providing a flexible and robust development environment.
Disadvantages of Flutter Framework
1. Large App Size:
Flutter apps tend to have a larger file size compared to native apps, which can be a concern for users with limited storage space or slow download speeds.
2. Limited Third-Party Libraries:
While Flutter's ecosystem is growing, it still lags behind native development in terms of the number and variety of available third-party libraries and plugins.
3.Platform-Specific Limitations:
Some platform-specific features or integrations might not be fully supported or require additional work to implement compared to native development.
4. Performance Overheads:
Although Flutter provides near-native performance, certain complex or resource-intensive applications may still experience performance issues compared to fully native apps.
5. Rapidly Evolving Framework:
Flutter is relatively new and is still evolving. Frequent updates and changes can sometimes lead to stability issues or require significant adjustments in the codebase.

Having discussed Flutter in detail, I have decided to adopt this platform for my participation in the HNG 11 internship (https://hng.tech/internship, https://hng.tech/hire). This fast-paced internship simulates real-world working environments, offering a valuable opportunity for developers to build resilience and thrive in the highly demanding tech space. Additionally, it provides an excellent learning experience to enhance my skills and knowledge.