Productive app development with Flutter

11/07/2023 | Blog

Modern software applications are not designed for a specific platform. They should function smoothly on as many end devices as possible with different hardware, operating systems and displays. Traditionally, the development of such apps is a challenge: with each additional target platform, the development effort and therefore the costs increase. With the help of cross-platform development environments such as React and Ionic, apps can be created for multiple platforms from a single code base. However, they are often complex to use and require compromises in performance due to additional translation layers. A young framework promises a solution to these disadvantages: Flutter.

Flutter is...

Flutter is a cross-platform open source development framework published by Google. It was first presented at the Dart Developer Summit 2015 and received its first stable version with the release of version 1.0 on December 4, 2018. Flutter is written in the Dart programming language, also developed by Google. As a multi-paradigm language, Dart supports functional, imperative, object-oriented and reflexive programming and uses type inference for its static and strong type system.

...customizable.

In Flutter, everything is a widget: buttons, text fields, lists, paddings and fonts all share the same object type. Widgets can be combined into new widgets by arranging, linking and nesting them as desired until they form the app widget: The view that is displayed to users on their devices. Widgets can be customized at any level, and completely new basic components can even be developed if required. This makes it easy to develop aesthetic, informative, functional and responsive user interfaces that meet your own requirements and ideas. Apps for Android, iOS, Windows, MacOS, Linux and the web can then be created from a codebase.

...fast.

Flutter compiles into high-performance, platform-specific code. In contrast to the alternative React Native, which communicates with native widgets via a JavaScript bridge, for example, Flutter does not suffer any major performance losses and runs very efficiently. Flutter uses its own graphics engine "Impeller", which offers additional performance advantages through the use of modern graphics APIs such as Metal and Vulkan. The result is a fluid, smooth user experience and low energy consumption.

...productive.

Flutter has the potential to increase productivity in development. According to a developer survey, participants were able to speed up the development of their app after adopting Flutter. Aesthetics and performance also benefited. In addition, respondents were able to offer their products on more platforms than before.

We can confirm these results through our own evaluation: Getting started with Flutter is easy thanks to excellent documentation and a dedicated YouTube channel. Once the basics have been learned, Flutter delivers satisfactory results in a short space of time.

Conclusion

Flutter is an attractive framework for modern app development. Less development effort for better results on more platforms and an open-source model are convincing arguments. Of course, the individual requirements of the project must always be taken into account when choosing a development environment.

Would you like individual advice on which framework best suits the requirements of your application? Do not hesitate to contact our experts.

About the author

Moritz Putzenlechner is studying for a Bachelor's degree in General Computer Science at Furtwangen University, specializing in software development. During his internship semester at M&M Software on the topic of "Evaluating Flutter", he dealt in detail with the usability of the framework for mobile app development and its advantages and disadvantages compared to other alternatives. n.

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