Flutter - One code, many platforms

Efficient work in the modern day, every programmer is searching for, especially when it comes to creating apps. If you want to implement a good idea on as many platforms as possible, you face the problem that you sometimes need a different programming language for each platform. For Android Java, for Apple Swift and for the Web Javascript. And every language also has its own tools.

Ideally you will find a developer who knows everything, but where can you find such people who are good at everything and affordable too? Actually, almost never and therefore you would need for this app three different developers, with now also effort is pending, the UI design must be right and the functions should work as well as possible.

Solution

The solution to the problem is to use a framework where, as a developer, you write your code and get results for the various platforms. Here you would only work with a programming language and an IDE. You save the time for the overall coordination, the design is consistent and the logics are only once needed.

Currently there are two major frameworks that make this implementation possible:

• React Native from Facebook (Javascript)
• Flutter by Google (Dart)

Both frameworks use different concepts and programming languages to represent the functions. In this article we do not want to compare the two frameworks, there are already many good articles:

• Droids on Roids
• Hackernoon
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Flutter

The framework offers many possibilities for implementing various apps. In addition to the framework, but above all, the tools are an advantage for the development.

• Display of the layout and construction grid for a better analysis of the UI structure
• Quickly review through hot reload without having to compile the app for minutes
• Create full apps with minimal code
• High performance with 60 FPS (ready compiled app)

A new language, like Dart, makes a lot of sense, because you are not influenced by old constructs from an already known language. Everything you learn is new and what you'll learn as a first is: Everything is a widget. What is it about that, we want to bring you closer in the next articles of this series.

Conclusion

Cross-platform development is not so difficult these days, and there are some good frameworks that can help you with your projects. We have already summarized a lot of information for you on our Flutter overview page, also to help you get started.