Cross Platform Development Without JavaScript

We all know there are cross platform development masters who use languages like JavaScript and CSS to create beautiful mobile apps. If you're like me, and you have very little experience in those areas and don't want to start a full JavaScript course, what should you do?

Don't get me wrong — JavaScript is wonderful and I do have at least little bit of experience with it. The truth is, it can really scare someone who is just starting out because there are so many frameworks we have: React, Angular, jQuery, Vue, Mercury, Deku, Riot.js ...... obama.js, just kidding , but you get what I'm saying.

For someone who might want something different, let me introduce you to Flutter. Flutter is a new mobile app SDK to help developers and designers build modern mobile apps for iOS and Android.

If you don't have any mobile development experience, Flutter is an easy and fast way to build beautiful mobile apps. If you are an experienced iOS or Android developer, you can use Flutter for your views and leverage your existing Java/ObjC/Swift investment.

With Flutter, you can access native features and SDKs on iOS and Android. You might be wondering what programming language Flutter uses — well, it uses Dart.

Dart is an application programming language that’s easy to learn, easy to scale, and deployable everywhere. Believe me, Dart is really nice. To have a great experience, the IDE I would advise you to use is IntelliJ IDEA, which works great with Dart.

Below is a sample code using Dart:

// Define a function.
printNumber(num aNumber) { 
print('The number is $aNumber.'); // Print to console.
} // This is where the app starts executing.

main() { 
var number = 42; // Declare and initialize a variable.
printNumber(number); // Call a function.
}

class Point { 
num x; num y; 
// Syntactic sugar for setting x and y
// before the constructor body runs.
Point(this.x, this.y);
}

I think the code is self explanatory — it's very similar to Java and other languages.

You can check out the Flutter website. The installation is straightforward. It would be wise to also check out Dart, which is what you will be using. There are codelabs for you to try it out, and if you have any issues, you can always contact me.

This post is originally published by the author on here. This version has been edited for clarity and may appear different from the original post