Job Role Insights: Flutter App Developer

We have all heard about the various OS on which apps are made. Microsoft, Android and iOS are the main Operating systems where all our major apps work on. We are so used to these systems that we may be keen to understand what happens in the background as well.

There are SDK (Software Development Kits) that are used to create and develop apps for each device or OS. Nowadays we hear about Flutter. Lets learn more about the same.

Google unveiled this Flutter app in 2017. Any SDK works on either Android or iOS platform. And if any company wants to make an app that both type of users can enjoy, then it becomes double the effort, costs and quite expensive - what with 2 different sets of teams working on it.

Hence a need to use a cross-platform option that will need only one team working on it and definitely a lesser expensive solution. It is a cross-platform framework that is booming in the market.

Flutter is an open-source, multi-platform mobile SDK which can be used to build iOS and Android apps with the same source code. You can think of Flutter as React Native but with the full support of native features. As compared to other cross-platform based apps, the ones developed on Flutter seem absolutely clean and crisp, without making you feel that something is amiss. As also on Native apps (which means the frameworks that work on either Android or iOS), the UI and other features are very smooth. But cross-functional ones seem to be missing some feature here or there. Many companies now prefer working on Flutter as the ease of use, mapping and concepts are worth the money.

Although, it is made by Google, its technical architecture is totally different. It uses Dart as its programming language while other Android platforms use Java or Kotlin. For Developers:

Earlier developers worked on Android Studio to develop apps for Android platform. It uses Emulators or Virtual Devices to run the apps. For each change, the developers rebuild the app and check it on emulators. However it is a slow process as the such builds can take time. With Flutter, the changes show instantly. To use this feature though, the developers need to adopt new techniques. They spend their time building UI. Unlike the native components, Flutter UI runs on its engine and framework. It uses widgets from the catalog to build UIs that supports Android and iOS. Flutter also allows developers to test at unit, functional as well as UI level with a solid testing framework. It follows a continuous integration and delivery practice to ensure a faster android app delivery.

What do the developers need to know: Experience developing with Dart, whether with Flutter or for the web Experience in structuring and refactoring the code, managing codebases on Git Experience in developing game applications for Android/iOS (using Unity, Unreal etc) Experience in deploying Machine Learning models to Android/iOS Experience with Java and/or Swift/Objective-C Experience launching and managing Production mobile apps Experience developing integrations with common APIs (e.g., Firebase, Twitter, Instagram, Stripe, Google etc.)