Why Flutter.pdf
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Flutter is a mobile app SDK that allows developers to build high-quality native apps for iOS and Android from a single codebase. It uses its own rendering engine instead of a webview, providing fast performance. Flutter apps are written in Dart, a language designed for mobile development that compiles to efficient ARM code. This allows developers to build beautiful, high-performance apps across platforms more easily and with a shorter development cycle compared to traditional native development. Many companies like Google now use Flutter internally to build their mobile apps.
Why Flutter.pdf
- 1. Why Flutter Randal L. Schwartz (Dart/Flutter GDE) on 2023-08-17 Why Flutter should be your next UI SDK for all platforms
- 2. Overview • What is Flutter? • What does Flutter do? • What experience does a developer need? • What kinds of apps can we build? • What makes Flutter unique? • Why Dart? • Notable Adopters
- 3. The evolution away from vendor lock-in • Some of us are old enough to remember ancient operating systems… • … that were provided by the vendor • … and generally closed source (with a few exceptions) • Then came the FLOSS revolution: the BSDs and Linux and others • Customers could f ix, extend, and modify the OS, or port it to new hardware • And share their code freely with others • But more importantly: write once for Linux, run on extremely varied hardware • Scaling to meet the needs from single-board micro devices to supercomputers • Linux became the open-source API for cross-platform portability
- 4. The Mobile Story • For over a decade, the smartphone vendors have been like the early computer vendors • Phone apps had to be written with: • vendor-supplied toolchains that varied between platforms • vendor-chosen languages that varied between platforms • APIs that varied greatly, even from release to release • vendor-developed, closed-source widgets and gestures • Releasing for both iOS and Android required specialized skills, or separate teams • And never quite looked or acted the same on both platforms • Then, along came Flutter, and suddenly the game has changed!
- 5. Flutter • Flutter is a mobile app SDK, complete with framework, engine, widgets, and tools • Gives developers easy and productive way to build and deploy beautiful apps • Currently, in production release for iOS, Android, and web • And desktop for Mac, Linux, and Windows • Dart (Flutter’s language) can be used to build web and server applications • Learn Dart once, develop for eight platforms
- 6. What does Flutter do? • For users: • Beautiful app UIs come to life • For developers: • Lowers the bar to entry for building mobile apps • Speeds up the development cycle (hot reload, more on that later) • Reduces the cost and complexity of app production across platforms • Permits a single mobile app dev team for both iOS and Android • For designers: • Helps deliver original design vision without compromises • Productive prototyping tool (rapid changes without long compile cycle)
- 7. What experience does a developer need? • Flutter uses Dart as the primary development language • Modern strongly-typed language with familiar constructs: • Classes, methods, variables • Complex data structures with generics, type inference, tuples • Imperative programming (loops, conditionals, pattern matching) • Functional programming (streams, immutable objects, list comprehensions) • No prior mobile experience required • Heck, even yours truly is doing mobile development now! • Even people with very little programming experience seem to be productive rapidly
- 8. What kinds of apps can we build with f lutter? • Optimized for 2D mobile apps that want to run on everything with a display • Some 3D is being slowly introduced • Capable of “brand- f irst” designs • Also mimics “stock platform” look and feel • Full featured apps including native services: • camera • geolocation • network • storage • sensors • bluetooth • NFC • and more!
- 9. Who makes and uses Flutter? • Open-source project (hosted on github) • Originally developed and still heavily supported by Google • Community contributions as well • Google uses Flutter to build business-critical apps for iOS and Android: • Mobile Sales Tool • Store Manager for Google Shopping Express • And growing number of internal projects • Nearly a million apps already deployed by third parties
- 10. What makes Flutter unique? • Flutter does not use WebView or the OEM widgets! • No penalty crossing between inputs, app code and rendering engine • Flutter uses Skia from Chrome (and soon, Impeller) to render its own widgets • The widgets are all written in Dart • Thin layer of C++ to talk to native APIs, with JNI and FFI support • Dart code also handles compositing, gestures, animation, frameworks, and so on • Code is easily inspectable, patchable, extendable • Cross-platform look and feel easily provided • or customized per platform for native feel • Design packages available for Windows, Linux, Mac desktop, and custom
- 11. Why Dart? • Google mobile team chose Dart based on numerous criteria • Two critical features: • A JIT-based fast development cycle for shape changing and stateful hot reloads • AOT compiler that emits ef f icient ARM code for fast startup and predictable speed • Can also re-use most code in Pub (except those that depend on dart:io or dart:html) • Flutter team has in f luenced Dart development • AOT compiler (produce native binaries more directly) • Optimizing VM for latency rather than throughput • Strong mode (sound type system)
- 12. Notable Adopters
- 13. Summing it up: Why Flutter? • The advantages of reactive views, with no JavaScript bridge • Fast, smooth, and predictable; code compiles AOT to native (ARM) code • The developer has full control over the widgets and layout • Comes with beautiful, customizable widgets • Great developer tools, with amazing hot reload • More performant, more compatibility, more fun • And, by the way, you can develop for many platforms from one code base • But that’s insigni f icant compared to the other gains!
- 14. For more information • Dart language: dart.dev • Includes language tour (mandatory!) and library tour (at least skim) • Flutter framework: f lutter.dev • Tutorials • Descriptions of widget classes • Cookbook • Codelabs • Full API descriptions • Support: f lutter.dev/community (join Slack and Discord from there)
- 15. Recommended YouTube Channels • Mine, of course: https://www.youtube.com/@RandalOnDartAndFlutter • Flutter of f icial: https://www.youtube.com/@ f lutterdev • Flutter Community: https://www.youtube.com/@FlutterCommunity