What is Flutter and why you should learn it in 2020
Published: 2020-01-27 12:26:44

<I>In the last article, I discussed <a href="https://dev.to/thomaswilfred15/why-you-should-create-react-native-apps-in-2020-kb9"> Why you should create React Native Apps in 2020 </a>. I got a few suggestions about Flutter. After going through it, I figured that I should write about it so that you can get an idea about both of them and decide what's best for you.</I>

Apps have become an important part of our daily life and this has caused an increase in app development. However, when the demand is large, the extent of competition becomes huge. Users have started to demand quick loading apps that don't occupy large storage space and work fluently.

To overcome this problem, developers have created "Instant apps". Instant apps are small in size and increase productivity since they don't need to be downloaded.

Currently, we have two software to develop Instant apps- React Native and Flutter. In this article, we are going to discuss Flutter and its importance in 2020.

<h3>What is Flutter?</h3>

<img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/flutter/website/master/src/_assets/image/flutter-lockup.png">

<a href="https://flutter.dev/">Flutter</a> is an open-source User Interface software development kit created by Google. It is commonly written in C, C++, and Dart and used to develop applications for Android, Linux, Google Fuchsia, Mac and the web.

It allows you to create a native mobile application with only one codebase, meaning you can create two different apps by using one programming language.

Flutter consists of two important parts

1. An SDK(Software Development Kit) - It is a collection of tools that are going to help you with the development of apps. It includes tools to compile your code into native machine code.

2. A Framework(UI Library) - It contains reusable UI elements(buttons, text inputs, and sliders) that you can personalize for your own needs.

To work on Flutter, a programming language named Dart is used. It was created by Google in 2011 and has aged well over the years. It focuses on front-end development and used to create mobile and web applications.

To make the selection of native app software for you, we have made a comparison between React Native and Flutter.

<h3>Comparison between React Native and Flutter</h3>

1. Flutter is programmed in Dart while React Native is programmed in Javascript.

2. Flutter is maintained by Google whereas React is maintained by Facebook.

3. React Native provides UI rendering and device access APIs whereas Flutter has the former and navigation, stateful management, and loads of libraries.

4. React Native has good community support compared to Flutter which is relatively new.

5. The React Native community has no official support for integration and UI level testing, while Flutter has great documentation and a rich set of testing features.

<h3>Why you should learn Flutter</h3>

1. <b>Companies</b>- Flutter is used by many big companies like Groupon, Google, Alibaba, Tencent, eBay, Emaar, and many more.

2. <b>Simple to learn and use</b>- It is very easy to create mobile applications with it. If you have used Java,  Swift, or React Native, you'll notice how Flutter is different.

3. <b>Productivity</b>- By using Flutter, you can change your code and see the changes in real-time. It takes a short time to update the application when you have saved it.

4. <b>Good Documentation</b>- Documentation is very detailed and with easy examples for basic use cases. 

5. <b>Growing Community</b>- Though it is a fairly new framework, its community support is expanding each passing day.

How to create <a href="https://codersera.com/blog/first-flutter-app/">your first Flutter app</a>: In this article, you will learn how to create your first application on Flutter.

How does <a href="https://buildflutter.com/how-flutter-works/">Flutter work?</a>: In this article, you will learn about the working of Flutter and its components.