With so many advantages and drawbacks of Flutter, one wouldn’t help but ask whether Flutter is a good option for App development. And this is the question we are about to answer in this article. We will compare the advantages and disadvantages of flutter and come up with a verdict at the end.

What is Flutter?

Flutter is an open-source technology owned by Google, and it is used for building desktop, mobile, and web applications with a codebase. Different from other solutions, Flutter is not a framework or library; it is a software development kit (SDK). To get a deeper understanding of Flutter, what is an SDK?

The scope of the SDK is much more significant because it is a collection of tools, and this includes libraries, documents, APIs, and frameworks, etc., which can provide you with everything you need to develop software. This is the case with Flutter; it has everything needed to create cross-platform applications.

Advantages of using Flutter

Let consider some important benefits you will get when you use flutter for software development.

Open Source

Flutter is Google's open-source software development kit. It provides simple posting of questions about issues and access to documents from developers in the open forum. Flutter programmers can learn and grow with a constantly evolving group of developers who make excellent contributions to the platform. Flutter improves the efficiency and productivity of the programmer, thereby reducing the time and cost of the whole project.

Development is Relatively Fast

This saves time, energy, and money. As with any other cross-platform development technology, you can use the same code base to build iOS and Android applications. Ultimately, this will speeds up the entire development process, meaning you don't need two teams to write code for a single platform.

Dart As Programming Language

Dart is an object-oriented programming language that Flutter utilized in building applications. Dart's independent features include extensive standard libraries, garbage collection, generic types, strong typing, and asynchronous awaits. Dart, like Java, uses functions that are popular in many other languages. Its reactive programming style enables developers to complete their daily tasks efficiently.

Hot Reload and Development

This is a unique feature of Flutter that allows developers to see code changes instantly. Both designers and developers can get every update in seconds. You do not have to allow updates to delay you, and you can continue to use the framework without interruption to develop additional features. This improves developer productivity and reduces the time required to build an excellent application. This saves a lot of cost for the entire project.

Uniform User Interface For iOS and Android

Flutter Widgets helps developers create powerful user interfaces for mobile applications. Different from other cross-platform frameworks, Flutter has a uniform widget object model. Using widgets, you can define everything from structuring and styling elements to layout elements.

Flutter is a Material Design widget from Google and Apple's Cupertino. When throwing the Flutter widgets into the Skia engine, developers don't need to utilize the original Equipment Maker widgets, which leads to a flawless app UI for iOS and Android.

Flutter is the preferred choice for companies that want to create the same look and feel for their mobile apps across platforms.

There is No Need For Many Testings

If you are using the same applications for two platforms, there will be less testing! The quality assurance process could be faster. Because it has a single codebase, developers write automated tests just once. Plus, quality assurance professionals do not have much work to do as they only need to review one application. Of course, if your applications are different, they should be tested on both platforms.

Drawbacks

Libraries and Support are Not Good Enough For Native Development

Flutter has outstanding support from Google, and there are many valuable libraries with features that can already be implemented. However, Flutter is still a newcomer, and not all the features you need can be gotten in these libraries. This means that your developers will have to create them, which will be stressful and waste time.

However, we can anticipate seeing the Flutter support improve quickly. In addition, the Flutter team provides excellent support for Flutter users and often answers questions that are requested.

Libraries Limitations

Flutter has some important libraries, but it will not have all the functionality it needs because the framework is recent. On the other hand, the native application features all the functions of the SDK, including Twilio, Stripe, and services like Ustream and Wowza.

These libraries need to be developed by flutter application developers, and this is a time-consuming task.

The Flutter Framework is Not Yet Stable

It has existed for a long time, which is why it is not yet very stable. There are still more or more minor problems, as well as the lack of advanced features to take advantage of operating system features. It does not still support some features; many libraries are in the pre-alpha phase and have limitations compared to native versions (such as Google Maps).

Continuous Integration

Native Android and iOS applications have pre-built solutions that allow them to be used with CI platforms such as Travis and Jenkins. However, it is crucial to configure toolkits for these platforms.

Verdicts

Flutter has many benefits and drawbacks, as seen above. However, the advantage outweighs the disadvantage. Flutter might be new and seems unstable; however, what it offers makes it a promising development technology.

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