you hear folks say I write flutter and you wonder if this dude is now working at FlutterWave🥶, they have come into money 😎, meanwhile they are going through their fair share of "shege", and "the bugs are bugging" at the moment, and the moment you try to bill them as per “some of the FlutterWave money” they turn on you 🥲.

This guide is for we that want to avoid such future scenarios and know what this flutter is all about so we can at least understand why "dem dey para", or if you are a beginner looking for a general overview of what flutter entails this guide is also for you

Firstly let's define some terms:

Flutter wave

Flutter wave is a unicorn payment company so different from flutter (a naming coincidence 😌), maybe that’s why people think flutter devs have stacks of cash in reserve, well that’s not the case, at least for me 🤲🏾.

Flutterwave is a Nigerian fintech company that provides a payment infrastructure for global merchants and payment service providers across the continent.🌎

The company was founded in 2016 by Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, Olugbenga Agboola, and Adeleke Adekoya and is headquartered in San Francisco, California with operations in Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, South Africa, and seven other African countries.

In 2021, Flutterwave raised a US$170 million Series C funding round 🥶. At the time, this was the largest amount ever secured by an African tech startup and gave it a valuation of over US$1 billion🥶🥶🥶, making Flutterwave a unicorn. Investors in Flutterwave include Y-Combinator, Visa Ventures, Mastercard, Avenir Growth Capital, and Tiger Global Management.

programming terms

Language: a language or programming language is a set of instructions that a computer is given to perform some actions, so basically we can’t write basic English language when we want to code out software, we have to use a bunch of predefined syntaxes built by a genius or a bunch of them 😎, as English can be understood by us when we are being spoken to, so also is a programming language to a computer. What enables the translation of this language to machine language (the language it understands) is the compiler.

Examples of such languages are Python(not an actual snake 🙃), C++, C, Java, JavaScript, Dart etc, these all have a specific syntax that the compiler can convert to mean something specific to the computer.

However, don’t be scared most programming languages read like normally English

(Example of hello world in python)

# This program prints Hello, world!

print('Hello, world!')

(a simple if-else statement in dart)

void main()
{
    int myAccountBalance = 10,000;

    // Condition is false
    if ( myAccountBalance > 30,000) {
    // This will not be printed
        print("You are rich 🙌🏿");
    }
    else {
    // This will be printed
        print("please help me 🤲🏾🤲🏾🤲🏾");
    }
}

IDE: is simply an environment where all these languages can be written and the compiler can then grab them for translation, think of them like media that brings together the language syntax and the compiler. Eg VsCode, Android Studio, Atom etc

Framework: this is a set of preset instructions and tools built for a specific language that allows for ease when building software with the language, I.e many languages have a ton of use-case which might prove to be a handful when using them for specific tasks but the framework built for this language allows for the developer to just use the tools or instructions already provided by the framework to ease the development process

E.g python is a very versatile language, that can be used for a lot, but there are loads of frameworks built on it to enable it to be more effective for a particular use case….

Automation - Selenium, robot

Web Development - Flask, Django

Ai - Numpy and Panda etc

So a developer who wants to build a specific software makes use of these frameworks for ease and to avoid repetitions, as writing this all by yourself could be a real insurmountable task.

Flutter

Now let's come back to flutter (why we are here init)😎

Flutter is an open source(meaning source code is available for all to see and for everyone to contribute to) framework built by google for and on the programming language Dart that enables us to build beautiful UIs for multiPlatform devices (iOS, Android, web, desktop, MacOS, watch OS etc) badass right😎, so we said built for dart yeah, that’s right it's powered by dart and allows us to make UI applications without having to build them from scratch ourselves, using something called widgets, earning it a popular phrase “Everything in Flutter is a Widget”.

Flutter is a powerful tool that allows developers to create high-performance mobile apps with a beautiful and customisable user interface (UI). With its pre-built widgets, developers can easily create visually appealing apps that reflect their brand and design.

One of the great advantages of Flutter is that it allows developers to build cross-platform mobile applications with a single codebase(amazing right? 😎). This means that developers can write code once and deploy it to both Android and iOS platforms, saving time and effort.

(A sample flutter app that shows a HelloWorld)

import 'package:flutter/material.dart';

void main() {
  runApp(const ShegeWidget());
}

class ShegeWidget extends StatelessWidget {
  const ShegeWidget({Key? key}) : super(key: key);

  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    return const MaterialApp(
      home: Scaffold(
        body: Center(
          child: Text(
            'Hello World,Give Me Gigs',
            style: TextStyle(fontSize: 30, fontWeight: FontWeight.w500),
          ),
        ),
      ),
    );
  }
}

(The result)

Flutter also has a hot reload feature that allows developers to see the changes they make to their code in real time without having to restart the app. This makes the development process faster and more efficient, which is important in today’s fast-paced tech industry.

In addition, Flutter is easy to learn and use, which makes it accessible to developers of all skill levels. With Flutter, developers can create high-quality mobile apps that are customised to their needs, helping them to stand out in a competitive market.

Overall, Flutter is a powerful tool that has a lot of potential for developers in the world. With its cross-platform capabilities, beautiful UI, and hot reload feature, Flutter can help developers create high-performance mobile applications efficiently and effectively.

Flutter allows us to fetch data from data sources online and display it with a user-friendly interface, this is why many companies are building their products with flutter banks and big e-commerce institutions have started adopting flutter as their goto framework for mobile-frontend development because of its versatility and ease of building.

If you have time check out this article by Jamiu Okanlawon organiser FlutterBytes here on introduction to flutter basics

I am a flutter developer myself, please reach out to me if you want to collaborate on a gig or even a job 😩🤲🏾🤲🏾.

LinkedIn

erijesudo@gmail.com

Looking to hearing from you soon 🤲🏾.