When an amazing technology like Flutter™ meets modern client demands, development takes flight

Recently, we’ve been building out a series of articles on Flutter™.

Since the beginning, Fresh’s software development team has cut its collective teeth on mobile, enterprise, and website development. It’s in our DNA. But in our ever-evolving world—where budgets are leaner, timelines are tighter, and expectations for quality remain sky-high—staying up to date with the best technology for the job is paramount.

The landscape of software development has fundamentally changed, so assessing (and reassessing) your workflows is vital.

Ricardo Colin, one of our senior mobile developers, has begun compiling articles on best practices in Flutter development (in the spirit of innovation in traditional workflows, he also wrote an excellent primer on optimizing your app development workflows with Generative AI). The focus of the Flutter series thus far has been primarily on mobile dev workflows, but the principles extend to the Flutter SDK generally.

Before we get into an overview of the articles, why do we like the Flutter SDK? Here are five reasons—among many others.

1. Cross-platform development: The Flutter SDK empowers devs to build multi-platform apps (iOS, Android, web, desktop) using a single codebase. The result? Saving significant time and effort throughout the development process, value which is ultimately passed on to your client.
2. Accelerated workflows: The Flutter SDK features like “hot reload” enable devs to see changes in the code instantly in an app. QA remains as crucial as ever, but features like hot reload (among many others) reduce the time needed for essential tasks like testing and debugging.
3. Native performance: For most clients, hybrid is a must. But your user base will still expect seamless Native functionality. Due to Flutter-developed apps being compiled to native code, minimal speed or efficiency is compromised, resulting in close-to-native performance.
4. Beautiful UI: What’s under the hood is crucial—users also expect a beautiful, fully functional paint job. Because the Flutter SDK offers numerous libraries and widgets, dev teams can create engaging UI. Working with an experienced design team makes the result even more polished.
5. Native Feature Access: iOS and Android are different platforms. But with the Flutter SDK's inherent versatility, devs can easily access platform-specific features and APIs with Flutter plugins, integrating native functionality into apps.

We could go on. The technology is truly amazing, from the Flutter SDK's massive community to application scalability and the flexibility of choosing between many IDEs (integrated development environments). There are so many benefits, and it’s worth considering if, after spending time understanding the core problem your client (or company) is trying to solve, you decide the Flutter SDK warrants further exploration.

That’s the high level—what follows is an overview of Ricardo’s series, the first three parts of which are live, with more to follow.

Part 1: Navigating the Framework and Architecture 

In the first article, Ricardo writes, “With its robust feature set, Flutter has become a compelling choice for developers. The prospect of developing applications in significantly less time is particularly appealing. The framework’s multi-platform development capability—ensuring near-identical appearances across both Android and iOS versions—eliminates the common concern of handling UI differences when developing for each platform separately.”

The meat of the article focuses on providing a detailed outline of how the Flutter SDK operates, with guidance on approaching the framework effectively.

Topics covered include:

• An overview of Flutter architecture
• The Embedder Layer
• The Engine Layer
• The Framework Layer
• State Management 
• Dependencies

The gist of the first installment is that acquiring a grasp of the basics of Flutter app development facilitates streamlined development processes. It also enables more efficient creation of cross-platform applications, ultimately saving resources by boosting productivity.

Part 2: Strategies for Streamlined and Efficient Workflows

The second installment of the series reiterates that understanding the architecture, engine, state management, and package dependencies is helpful, then expands into more detailed advice about how to use the Flutter SDK's full potential in your project.

Topics covered include:

• Use of “const” constructor
• List comprehension
• Relative imports for files in ‘lib’
• Proper naming for human readability
• ‘??’ and ‘?.’ operators
• Ternary Operator for single-line cases
• Using _(underscore) if the value is not used inside the block of code

Implementing these strategies and the others discussed in other series installments can significantly enhance your team’s Flutter development workflow, improving performance, maintainability, and overall quality. 

Part 3: Enhancing Readability and Reducing Redundancy

The next iteration of the series focuses on how simple enhancements can significantly impact an app’s performance, elevate a dev team’s coding proficiency, and expose devs who are new to the Flutter SDK with valuable insights and tactics to accelerate their path to mastery.

Topics covered include:

• Using the spread operator
• Interpolation to compose strings
• Expression function bodies
• The Cascades Operator
• Raw string
• Use ‘if’ condition instead of conditional expression
• Use ListView.builder for long lists
• async/await overusing future callback

In sum, understanding the benefits of Flutter and embracing new additions like the latest Dart syntax can positively contribute to an app’s performance, code readability, and maintainability.

The world is moving fast. Prepare your team to move faster by equipping them with Flutter.

The running theme of our newsletter is convergence: “Technology isn’t just accelerating. It’s converging.”

Mobile app dev meets the need for speed—what technology(ies) will fill the gap?

The modern world demands robots with humanity—how can Generative AI and a UX/UI design play a role?

A small company that produces fiber optic cables needs to optimize its process—could a highly customized manufacturing automation system that empowers human operators yield better results than traditionally manual workflows?

The same speculation applies to app development. The Flutter SDK has answered the call.

Companies and their users will continue expecting faster go-to-market strategies with increasingly beautiful and functional products. Incorporating cutting-edge tech like the Flutter SDK into dev workflows is imperative to satisfy their demands.

The possibilities are infinite and awesome.

Stay tuned for additional articles coming soon, with tips on avoiding common mistakes, further coding best practices, and testing and security!