Chapter 1. Meet Flutter

Flutter is a mobile SDK, built and open sourced by Google; and at its core, it’s about empowering everyone to build beautiful mobile apps. Whether you come from the world of web development or native mobile development, Flutter makes it easier than ever to create mobile apps in a familiar, simplified way. Flutter is special in that it makes it truly possible to “write once, and deploy everywhere.” As of this writing, Flutter apps will deploy to Android, iOS, and ChromeOS. In the near future, Flutter apps will also run as web apps and desktop apps on all major operating systems.

In short, Flutter is a truly complete SDK for creating applications. It’s a platform that provides everything you need to build applications: rendering engine, UI components, testing frameworks, tooling, router, and many more features. The consequence is that you get to focus on the interesting problems in your app. You can focus specifically on the domain functionality, and everything else is taken care of. The value that Flutter provides is astonishing.

1.1. Why does Flutter use Dart?

1.2. On Dart

1.3. Who uses Flutter?

1.4. Who should be using Flutter?

1.4.1. Teams, project leads, and CTOs

1.4.2. Individual developers

1.4.3. Code school students and recent CS grads

1.4.4. Open source developers

1.4.5. People who value speed

1.4.6. People who are lazy

1.4.7. People who value control

1.5. Who this book is for

1.6. Other mobile development options

1.6.1. Native development (iOS and Android)

1.6.2. Cross-platform JavaScript options

1.7. The immediate benefits of Flutter

1.7.1. No JavaScript bridge

1.7.2. Compile time

1.7.3. Write once, test once, deploy everywhere

1.7.4. Code sharing

1.7.5. Productivity and collaboration

1.7.6. Code maintenance

1.7.7. The bottom line: Is Flutter for you?

1.8. Future benefits of Flutter: Web apps and desktop apps

1.9. A brief intro to how Flutter works

1.9.1. Everything is a widget