Get Started with Flutter: Flutter Basics
As we all are aware, that technology is daily expanding and making most of our work easy. Mobile has become our beloved friend. Which provides us the applications to cut off from tedious work. But for developers it is becoming very difficult to create such apps that using very complex programing languages, tools and technology. But as we all know google saves all of us and also trying to make things easy for developers as well. Only google understands developers’ pain! Love you Google for providing flutter.
Hello everyone, this is Gadhavi Uma. I am a Flutter Mobile Application Developer. Recently my friend Jiya asked me about what is flutter and why it is trending nowadays. She wanted to know if flutter can enhance her career. So we were discussing below things hope that can answer your questions regarding flutter.
Jiya: Uma tell me what actually flutter is?
Uma: Flutter is basically a UI Toolkit to build beautiful natively compiled cross-platform applications. With flutter you can create :
1. Mobile Application for both Android and IOS
2. Diffrient kind of Websites
3. Different Desktop Applications
from single code base!, yes you can do all of above by writing code only once
Jiya: how it is possible?
Uma: Jiya, Flutter has two important things to do so:
1) SDK (Software Development Kit): SDK is simply a collection of required tools to create an application. In this tool collection google has provided native code converter uses arm machine. Which plays a major role to convert a single code according to environment like for android, IOS or for website to desktop app.
Flutter is independent from platform specific things. It has specific libraries which helps flutter to convert native code to platform specific layout.
2) UI Library Kit: In flutter, everything you create is basically a widget. Like buttons, text field and all such controls are widget. these all are accessible using libraries. So you can create personalised application or website according to your client’s need.
one more thing google also allows developer to use and change native widget code according your need and also you can create your widgets by yourself.
Jiya: sounds interesting, but there must be price to pay for such reliable building experience
Uma: not at all, it’s completely free. Flutter is an open source and tools that we use in app development are also open source. You don’t need to pay any penny for it. Just learn and use. For learning also flutter dev community has provided very easy step-by-step tutorials.
Jiya: can you tell me features of flutter?
Uma: off-course I would love to.
Flutter offers :
1) Quick development: As in, it has vast libraries of fully customizable widget to provide efficient usage in creating amazing applications. Also flutter enables hot reload which provide coder a facility to test code in mill-second!!
Yes, you can change one line and see difference directly. Which is a lifesaver for developer from Google.
2) Expressive and Flexible UI development: Flutter uses googles standard material designing concepts to build ui’s which provides very flexible and native kind user experience. We can use widget according to need, which provides fast rendering on the device to create user friendly, flexible ui designs.
3) Native Performance: you may have heard about different cross platform app development technology, which provides many facilities similar, but they can not provide native experience like this. In other technologies you have to implement few things to customize their layout according to size and platform specific setting but flutter is different!!! its platform independent and offers seemless experience to user. That is ultimately our goal as developer, right!!!
Jiya: ok it is good to know but tell me how flutter can be beneficial to me and how to get started with flutter.
uma: let me tell you few things that supports developer for development easily
1) It’s very simple to learn: flutter uses dart as programing language which is very easy to learn. Anyone can learn it. No prior experience in programing is mandatory. If anyone learned one OOP language, then they can be pro in flutter app development in short time.
2) Quick compilation and easy implementation: pre-define widget helps to maximize productivity in less time
3) Ideal for freelancers and start up: as in one person can do all things efficiently like design, code and deploy application for different platform, it is highly recommended for freelancers and start-up companies
also for client it is flexible as coast of creation decreases
4) Decent documentation: For every widget and designing is provided on flutter developer’s website as a guideline which easily understandable to anyone who has basic knowledge of English!!!
5) Open-Source: Flutter is open source so anyone can use it.android studio and vs code are tools for development, both are open source so free to use!!
6) Code Complexity: Flutter uses minimal code and reuse pre-defined widget so code complexity decreases and helps reliability in running applications smoothly
7) Everything in Flutter is a Widget: you can use pre-defined widget or you can create your own widgets easily.
Jiya: I got your point, Uma. Is there any loopholes or disadvantages to use flutter?
Uma: As we know, everything has advantage and disadvantages. But I can say flutter has more advantages and ease to develop cross platform application so we can neglect its drawbacks such as.
1) Flutter is comparably to other languages is new and still in development phase so there are many updates come in each iteration so a developer has to monitor latest changes and updates.
2) For creating flutter app’s you need to learn dart language
3) Few concepts are still in under development phase, so can have problems to implement in the current scenario. I didn’t still find one though!!
Jiya: ok Uma I am now thinking to learn flutter from where should I start?
Uma: great to hear, it’s very easy I will help you. For that first, you will need to install android studio or vs code.
you can download android studio from official Website
https://developer.android.com/studio
or vs code from
https://code.visualstudio.com/download
install any of them as according to your ease
now you can go to flutter Developers official website
download flutter and install it that’s all…
Jiya: Hey Uma, it may be easy for you to install such things but I don’t have any prior experience please guide me
Uma: okay, Let me show you step-by-step How to install Android studio first
Step 1: go to Android Developers website, which is https://developer.android.com/studio
Step 2: You will find a button for downloading android studio. Click it, will ask to accept licence, accept it and download.
Step 3: After download completes double click on installer. They will prompt you like this click next.
Step 4: click on next, then you will be asked to choose the destination of installation files
Android studio will initialise default path for installation. It's advisable to not change it. Click next.
Step 5: you will be prompted to choose what to install, select all and click next
Step 6: once all components are installed, click next
Step 7: Check the check box start android studio and click on finish great you have installed android studio
Now we have to download flutter for that
Step 1: Go to flutter Developer’s official website at https://flutter.dev/docs/get-started/install
Download flutter according to your OS
Step 2: (For Windows) Inside C: drive create folder name it Src and extract the downloaded zip file
Now we have to connect flutter with android Studio
Step 1: Inside Android Studio go to setting, which will open window inside that click on plugins
Inside options find Flutter and dart install it
Step 2: Now Go to menu create new Flutter project you will see this window select flutter application click on next
Step 3: here you have to specify your project name, Flutter Sdk path and location where you want to store the project and click next
Step:4 then specify your package name and click on finish
Congratulations, you have created your first flutter Application project. Flutter will provide some default code. You can run and check output on emulator.
Thank you for reading. Hope this can be useful!!
