The Battle for Mobile App Dominance: Flutter vs. Kotlin

What is Flutter?

Flutter is Google’s portable UI toolkit for crafting stylish, natively compiled mobile, web, and desktop apps from a single codebase. This free, open-source platform allows developers to create applications with a native feel for Android and iOS, all from one codebase.

What is Kotlin?

Kotlin is a programming language that is free, static, open source, and primarily created for use on Android and JVM. It offers features of both object-oriented and functional programming languages, making it a versatile choice for developers. Kotlin Multiplatform, currently in alpha, allows developers to share their code, business logic, and data layer with platforms such as Android, iOS, and others.

Choosing Between Flutter and Kotlin

The age-old question: which one is better? The answer lies in understanding the unique needs of your project. If you’re looking for high-performance capabilities, Kotlin might be the way to go. However, if you’re working on a small startup team and want to build out your minimum viable product (MVP) quickly with great UI appeal, Flutter is the better choice.

Development Trends, Statistics, and Adoption

The numbers don’t lie. GitHub ranks Kotlin as the 14th most popular programming language, with Dart, the programming language used by the Flutter SDK, ranking 16th. However, Flutter leads the pack with 138k stars and 21k forks on GitHub, compared to Kotlin’s 40k stars and 5k forks.

Comparing Kotlin and Flutter for Mobile App Development

When it comes to mobile app development, both Kotlin and Flutter have their strengths and weaknesses. Here’s a brief comparison:

• Performance: Both have their pros and cons, but Kotlin provides more access to native features and components.
• Language and Syntax: Kotlin and Dart are similar in many ways, with both being object-oriented programming languages.
• Community Support: Both have great community participation, but Flutter has more active membership participation with growing popularity.
• Pricing: Flutter is open source and free to use, offering the fastest way to build out your MVP.
• Speed: Kotlin is typically faster because it compiles to the format of the target platform.
• Project Setup and Configuration: Flutter can be set up on more development environments than Kotlin, with a relatively shorter setup timeframe.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Kotlin and Flutter

Here’s a breakdown of the advantages and disadvantages of each:

Kotlin

• Advantages:
  • great performance
  • suitable for scalability
  • easy learning curve
  • good community support and maintenance
• Disadvantages:
  • expensive development cost
  • increased app development timeframe
  • fewer third-party libraries

Flutter

• Advantages:
  • faster application development timeframe
  • hot reload feature
  • elegant user interfaces
  • fantastic community support
  • low cost app development
• Disadvantages:
  • larger app size

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  • fairly new job market

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Code Comparison

Let’s take a look at a Flutter code snippet in a simple counter application. This application simply displays a zero value at launch, and has an increment and reset button for the value displayed on the screen:

import 'package:flutter/material.dart';

void main() {
  runApp(MyApp());
}

class MyApp extends StatelessWidget {
  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    return MaterialApp(
      title: 'Flutter Demo',
      theme: ThemeData(
        primarySwatch: Colors.blue,
      ),
      home: MyHomePage(title: 'Flutter Demo Home Page'),
    );
  }
}

class MyHomePage extends StatefulWidget {
  MyHomePage({Key key, this.title}) : super(key: key);

  final String title;

  @override
  _MyHomePageState createState() => _MyHomePageState();
}

class _MyHomePageState extends State {
  int _counter = 0;

  void _incrementCounter() {
    setState(() {
      _counter++;
    });
  }

  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    return Scaffold(
      appBar: AppBar(
        title: Text(widget.title),
      ),
      body: Center(
        child: Column(
          mainAxisAlignment: MainAxisAlignment.center,
          children: [
            Text(
              'You have pushed the button this many times:',
            ),
            Text(
              '$_counter',
              style: Theme.of(context).textTheme.headline4,
            ),
          ],
        ),
      ),
      floatingActionButton: FloatingActionButton(
        onPressed: _incrementCounter,
        tooltip: 'Increment',
        child: Icon(Icons.add),
      ),
    );
  }
}

Setting up the project above for Flutter took less than 10 minutes on an unsophisticated machine with a RAM of 8GB and a Core i3 processor. Setting up the Kotlin project and completing it took more than 30 minutes on the same machine.

The Verdict

When it comes down to making a choice between Flutter or Kotlin for mobile application development, all frameworks and programming languages have their ups and downs. But for startups or companies looking to keep costs relatively low in building out their MVP, Flutter is a great choice. With its hot reload feature, elegant user interfaces, and fantastic community support, Flutter is the perfect tool for rapid application development.