Flutter is a modern, fast-growing project by Google. It’s a complete software development kit (SDK) that enables creating functional cross-platform applications for mobile, web and desktop. Like many other cross-platform technologies, Flutter has its own special features that make it stand out.
Some key features of Flutter you need to know are:
- It’s an open-source, cross-platform toolkit
- Apps are written in the dart programming language
- It has its own graphics engine, Skia
- It supports three platforms officially: ios, android, and web.
Moreover, it is architected in a way that it can be brought to other platforms, via custom Flutter engine embedders.
Traditionally, cross-platform toolkits were used to either wrap a web view in a native app and build the application as if it were a website or they wrapped native platform controls and provided some cross-platform abstraction over them. Essentially, cross-platform tools let you write the code once and use it on both iOS and Android. Yet not all can render the same look like a native app. Flutter took a different approach, improving the overall experience of app development a whole lot. It provides a framework for the application developers to work with and an engine with a portable runtime to host applications. The framework builds upon the Skia graphics library, providing widgets that are rendered, as opposed to being just wrappers on native controls. Flutter maintains the native experience and feel of the app, without compromising on its performance with any platform.
According to venturebeat.com in 2020, Google revealed that “nearly half a million developers” now adopt its open-source UI framework Flutter every month. Approximately 2 million developers around the globe have adopted Flutter since its version 1.0 was released in late 2018. Furthermore, Flutter’s use is growing month-over-month, and currently there are over 50,000 Flutter based apps on Google Play.
Furthermore, Google also separated the share of Flutter developers: 35.0% in startups, 26.0% in enterprises, 19.0% in self-employed, and 7.0% in design agencies.
Google also shared some interesting insights on the demographic of Flutter Developers
- 60.0% of the Flutter developers are working with Windows, 27.0% are with macOS, and 13.0% are using Linux.
- 78.0% of Flutter developers use a stable channel, 11.0% use beta, and 11.0% use either master or dev.
- India, China, the EU, Brazil, and the United States are the top five countries using Flutter.
- Popular framework packages deployed in Flutter apps are provider, url_launcher, google_fonts,flutter_bloc and bloc.
- The most famous third-party packages integrated with Flutter apps are rxdart, provider, SQLite, font_awesome_flutter, cached_network_image, and flutter_launcher_icons.
Flutter has seen tremendous success since it has launched. In just a matter of years, the number of packages, widgets and plugins for iOS and Android development on Flutter have grown making this SDK versatile and complete.
