Introduction

Flutter is a multi-platform framework built by Google and used to develop native applications for
web, mobile and desktop from a single code base. The key idea behind Flutter is to keep a single
repository and compile code to multiple platform targets. Flutter is free and its code is released as
open-sourced.

Flutter uses Dart Programming Language as its base language and facilitates the app development
process with modern features such as: hot reloading, customizable widgets and ready-to-use
libraries.

The framework is built around native user-experience. It quickly integrates with pre-built UI toolkits
such as Material Design and Cupertino to speed up the development process. Flutter benefits from
the native performance of each platform as the code is compiled individually for web, mobile and
desktop.

What is Flutter?
Flutter is a free and open-source mobile UI framework created by Google and released in May 2017.
The Flutter framework consists of both a software development kit (SDK) and their widget-based UI
library. This library consists of various reusable UI elements, such as sliders, buttons, and text inputs.

Developers building mobile applications with the Flutter framework will do so using a programming
language called Dart. With a syntax like JavaScript, Dart is a typed object programming language that
focuses on front-end development.

Why Flutter?
1. Increased productivity. Using the same codebase for iOS and Android saves both time and
resources. Flutter’s native widgets also minimize time spent on testing by ensuring there is
little to no compatibility issues with different OS versions.
2. Easy to learn. Flutter allows developers to build native mobile applications without needing
to access OEM widgets or use a lot of code. This, in addition to Flutter’s particularly
appealing user interface, makes the mobile app creation process much simpler.
3. Great performance. Users report that it is difficult to notice the difference between a Flutter
app and a native mobile app.
4. Cost-effective. Building iOS and Android apps with the same codebase is essentially building
two apps for the price of one.
5. Available on different IDEs. Developers are free to choose between Android Studio and VS
Code to edit their code on Flutter.
6. Great documentation & community. Flutter has many great resources to answer your
questions, thanks to its ample documentation with easy-to-follow use cases. Flutter users
also benefit from community hubs like Flutter Community and Flutter Awesome for
exchanging ideas.
 Companies using Flutter

User Base study, when to use Flutter in comparison to

Kotlin?

Flutter:
Flutter is Google’s UI toolkit for building natively compiled, appealing, and feature-rich apps for
mobile, web, and desktops. Flutter is one of the fastest-growing open-source communities. It lets
developers build applications for Android, iOS, Linux, Windows, Mac, Google Fuchsia, and web from
a single codebase.
Advantages Of Flutter:
 Stateful Hot Reload making app development faster
 Full-customization of widgets
 Declarative and Expressive UIs
 Native performance
 Reduced cost and time

Disadvantages Of Flutter:
 Performance issues on iOS
 Large file sizes
 Lack of third-party libraries and integrations
 Dart language

Kotlin:
Kotlin is a general-purpose programming language by JetBrains. It is designed to interoperate fully
with Java. It is supported by Google as its preferred language for Android app development. It
quickly became popular after Google announced first-class support for Kotlin on Android.

Advantages Of Kotlin:
 Fully interoperable with Java
 Concise, secure, and reliable code
 Easy learning curve
 Native-like performance
 Faster time-to-market of an app
 Easy maintenance of code
Disadvantages of Kotlin:
 Lower compilation speed than Java
 Fewer Kotlin experts

The Popularity and Market Share of Kotlin and Flutter

In terms of popularity, both Kotlin and Flutter are popular with respect to mobile app development.
There are plenty of reasons why Flutter why shines, however Kotlin with its own features and
functionalities outcome as one of the top mobile app development tool. We’ll discuss the technical
terms of each later in this article, but first, we need to focus on the current point ‘popularity and
market share of these technologies.