flutter apps
Welcome! I am really excited to help you dive into Flutter. It is one of the most popular and modern ways to build apps today.
To make sure we tailor this journey perfectly to you, what is your current experience level with programming or app development, and do you have a specific project in mind that you would love to build?
I am a complete beginner with no coding experience.
Welcome! I am absolutely thrilled to help you take your very first steps into coding with Flutter. Since you are starting entirely from scratch, we will make sure to keep things clear, simple, and visual.
Your path
Setting Up the Development Environment
Core Concepts: Widgets and Layouts
Building Your First Flutter App
What Exactly is Flutter?
Think of as a highly advanced digital workshop. Normally, if someone wants to build a mobile app, they have to write two completely separate versions: one for iPhones using Apple's tools, and another for Android devices using Google's tools. It is like writing the same book in two different languages from scratch.
Flutter changes that game entirely. It lets you write your app's code just once, and then it magically packages that single codebase to run beautifully on iPhones, Android phones, web browsers, and even desktop computers.
Who created Flutter and why?
Google officially created and introduced it to the world in 2015, with its first stable release launched in 2017.
Google created it to solve a major pain point they faced themselves: the massive engineering cost and effort required to develop and maintain identical, high-quality apps for both iOS and Android. By building Flutter, they wanted a tool that didn't compromise on speed, allowed for beautiful custom designs, and let developers write code just once.
Today, Google uses Flutter for some of its most massive products, including Google Pay and Google Earth, while giant global brands like Alibaba and BMW also rely on it.
How does Google Pay use Flutter?
It is fascinating how Google Pay pulled this off. Initially, the Google Pay team had to maintain two completely separate, massive codebases—one written in Java/Kotlin for Android, and another in Objective-C/Swift for iOS. Whenever they wanted to release a new feature, like a new scratch-card reward or a peer-to-peer payment tool, they had to write and test the code twice.
To solve this, Google decided to rewrite the global Google Pay app using . By migrating to Flutter, they were able to consolidate their engineering efforts into a single codebase. This meant that a single team of developers could write a feature once, and it would immediately work on both Android and iOS with identical behavior and a highly polished, consistent user interface. It allowed them to scale their app to millions of new users globally much faster while writing far less code.
How much code did they actually save?
It is absolutely mind-blowing how much efficiency they unlocked! By moving to a single codebase, the Google Pay team managed to reduce their total engineering effort by a whopping 70%.
On top of that, they were able to slash their overall code size by 35%—meaning they eliminated hundreds of thousands of lines of redundant code that they no longer had to maintain, debug, or rewrite for different devices. It made their entire app leaner, faster, and much easier to update.
Now that you have seen how powerful Flutter is for massive companies, let's look at the engine under the hood. Specifically, we should talk about , the secret language that makes all of this work so smoothly.