Flutter
A short explanation of Flutter in our glossary
Flutter first appeared as an open-source project from Google in late 2018 and simplifies the process of app development. Flutter is a framework for building cross-platform apps using the Dart programming language. It is primarily used to develop iOS and Android apps, but apps for macOS, Windows, Linux and Google Fuchsia can also be built with it.
For apps built with Flutter, developers don't have to account for the particularities of the different systems, because they can be developed from a single codebase.
Fast execution speed and short development times are Flutter's primary focus.
Architecture
Flutter itself uses the Dart Virtual Machine (Dart VM) as well as the Skia graphics library. The Flutter engine was written in C++.
Dart
Dart, the programming language developed by Google, runs — like JavaScript — directly as a web app in the browser and is therefore intended to become a modern successor to the classic web scripting language.
While Flutter programs are translated to JavaScript with the Dart2js transcompiler so they run directly in modern web browsers, they can also be executed directly on a server.
Widgets
Object-oriented programming is applied consistently, right down to the user interface.
The interface of a Flutter program essentially consists of widgets. These can be nested within one another. Every piece of displayed text or every button is a widget with different properties that can be changed. They can influence one another and respond to external state changes with built-in functions. They can also be extended with additional functionality as needed.
Advantages
The Dart programming language shares many similarities with other languages in its fundamental development mechanics. Development with Flutter is considerably accelerated because it was developed together with Dart by Google, so the two build on each other, which speeds up development enormously.
Further advantages are that Flutter and Dart are open source and that Flutter is free to use.
Extensive documentation and community support are also provided.
The fact that only a single codebase has to be developed for all the major operating systems is another advantage of Flutter, as are the ready-made UI elements that are an integral part of the software.