Building a new app through Flutter

While the debate is still going on whether native apps are better than cross-platform, it does seem difficult to create native apps on different platforms. It consumes more time, resources and can be a tedious process. Enter flutter, Google’s software development kit that is used for creating native interfaces for Android and iOS.

Flutter was first showcased in 2015 as ‘sky’. Since then, the open source SDK has been constantly evolving with the help of Google’s community of developers and has inspired much awe from its users even before the release of it’s v1.0 and that is a clear indication that Google has indeed identified a major development problem and come up with a great solution.

Flutter works on existing code and can be used to make rich user experiences. Development is faster on Flutter and the cost and complexity are less. This leads to a lower entry barrier for developers making it the easiest it has ever been to be an app developer.

The hot reload feature allows users to experiment with the UI, which makes prototyping easy and fast. It uses its own rendering engine to draw widgets, enabling beautiful motion and animation. It is going to be an essential tool for brand-first apps.

The most important thing about flutter though is how it makes it easier for the designer and the developer to collaborate and communicate with each other.

It is currently being used to power Alibaba, Google AdWords and many other apps. Another interesting thing about flutter is that Google is using it to make apps for the Fuchsia project.

Amidst the capability and complexity of the mobile platforms, we tend to forget that it is still a young technology. It is, in fact, less than a decade old. What shape it will take eventually still remains unknown to us. However, every once in a while there comes a technology that takes things a step forward, one incremental step into the infinity. And it can be said of Flutter that it is going to make an impact not too big, but an impact nonetheless.