What is Serverless?

A native cloud architecture, which enables shifting of operational responsibilities to cloud platforms like Amazon Web Series (AWS) and Google Cloud Platform (GCP), thereby increasing innovation as well as agility. You can design, develop, and run applications without thinking of servers via the serverless mode. Infrastructure needed for servers & cluster provisioning gets avoided by the usage of serverless applications. It can be designed for almost any type of application or backend services as well as anything required running & scaling them effectively. 

Serverless, a movement driven by businesses and developers, focus on minimizing the adverse effect brought about by large-scale server management. By taking away the most menial parts of an application designing process, developers get to focus their work on improving and delivering quality business value. The serverless movement gets defined via empowering developers for designing apps single-handedly, which handles production-level traffic. Through serverless movement, the main focus lies in the design process. Thus, ultimately serverless applications help developers in focusing their efforts on the most valuable assets.

Why focus on designing serverless applications? 

Modern applications get designed with increased agility and a lower total cost of ownership. Designers & developers get to focus on core products instead of worrying about operating and managing servers, either in cloud or on-premises. Scalable and reliable products get developed with this reduced hassle; an excellent way to save some needed time & energy.

The mandates of Serverless applications

The serverless applications go hand-in-hand with various mandates. Let’s have a look at these essential commandments that define them: 

• Unique & quality products or services get designed by outsourcing all non-essentials. 
• Serverless cloud services favored with stateless computing, events, APIs, and open-source. 
• Code is a liability and hence, keeps it to a minimum. 
• No servers, containers, or instances unless there are necessary. 
• Customer satisfaction should get established and make it one of the high priorities. 
• Product goals should be given priority over technology. 
• Deploy the designed serverless applications. 

Factors that make applications, Serverless

Four major factors define the applications to be serverless. Let’s have a look at those essential factors that make the applications, serverless: 

• Zero Administration: Code deployment without any provisioning beforehand or managing anything afterward. The operation department need not be bothered. 
• Auto-scaling: Scaling change management using service providers for handling quick bursts of traffic. 
• Pay-per-use: The function-as-a-service gets charged based on its usage allowing a complete resource utilization process. This whole process results in about 90% cost-savings over a cloud Virtual Machine (VM). No paying for unused resources; a way to save funds as well. 
• Increased velocity: Shortening the loop between design, deploying, and production processes and easier to bring your ideas to life. Smaller teams benefit from this factor as there’s less to provision up-front along with the whole managing process after deployment that helps with shipping more features. 

The use of Serverless components to design applications

The serverless components provide a uniform experience. Each serverless component provides provisioning, rollback, and removal functionality for that particular service, which gets controlled by you via the Serverless Components CLI (Command Line Interface). Any cloud service gets packaged as a serverless component. 

All serverless components get gathered together for nesting them in a larger component. The required infrastructure-level components get combined for the creation of a serverless API (Application Programming Interface). In combination, these individual serverless components get connected to form a higher-order Component. This higher-order serverless component gets used elsewhere by developers by tweaking some small aspects. 

Composing Serverless components to form an entire application 

Higher-order components, we discussed in the previous section, helps in designing serverless applications with ease. Design higher-order components and combine them. Nest several serverless components and combine them to obtain the desired higher-order components. Developers get to re-use various serverless components for designing higher-order components. Serverless components & applications focus on outcomes rather than the infrastructure. 

Conclusion

In this article, we saw how to design & create higher-order components from the basic serverless units. The higher-order components form a base of serverless applications. As discussed, serverless applications enable innovation & agility via cloud platforms like AWS (Amazon Web Services) and GCP (Google Cloud Platform). Get to know more about serverless applications and use them for embracing innovation. 

What would be the outcome if two hot cross-platform app development technologies such as Flutter & ReactNative are compared?

The two powerhouses of mobile app development technology come with various strengths & weaknesses that should be, pondered upon for a deeper understanding. Flutter, created by Google, created quite a buzz as soon as it got introduced; ReactNative, by Facebook, getting stunned by this release! A healthy competition ensues with this new trend in the mobile app development world. 

The evolution of social media marketing and the growing popularity of mobile applications demand business enterprises, various firms, and organizations to launch their mobile applications. The firms are searching for options to design mobile apps, especially for Android & iOS with faster speed and fewer resources. For developers to design apps for Android & iOS, it requires them to learn two to three completely different sets of technologies. Cross-platform solutions help in designing apps for both Android & iOS faster with a simple language. 

Various criteria or categories used to understand various nuances of Flutter as well as ReactNative. Let’s have a look into those via a healthy comparison

Flutter v/s React Native

Mobile application developers rely heavily on cross-platform apps for a faster designing process using a single programming language. ReactNative & Flutter are two such prominent applications used widely by the developers. ReactNative, a project started by Facebook, got open-sourced in 2015; whereas, Flutter started by Google in 2017 gained prominence in recent years.

Programming Language

ReactNative uses JavaScript while Flutter runs on the Dart programming language. With ReactNative, developers get the freedom to design any type of mobile apps via a bit of training. Developers know JavaScript like the back of their palms and hence, a dynamically typed language. Dart syntax is easier to understand; this allows developers to start working with the programming language, pretty easily. As developers were more familiarized with JavaScript, so a majority of them preferred to stick with ReactNative in the beginning, but the easiness to learn DART and its power to control every pixel in the app is changing the trend towards Flutter now. 

Technical Architecture

The internal architecture of ReactNative relies heavily on the JavaScript (JS) runtime environment referred to as JS Bridge. Flux architecture, from Facebook, forms the crux of ReactNative. Flutter revolves around Dart framework and this structure provides all required technologies for developing mobile apps such as Material Design & Cupertino. Skia C++ engine is used by the Dart framework that comprises all protocols.

User-Interface Component & Development API 

The frameworks should have Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for smooth access into the native modules without any hassles. ReactNative relies on third-party libraries very heavily. Flutter framework designed with User Interface (UI) rendering components, which removes the need for third-party libraries. Flutter framework comes with the whole armoury for developing mobile apps. The widgets in Flutter allow developers to easily render UI on both Android & iOS platforms. 

Developer Productivity

A key element for building apps faster, the nuance, developer productivity should not be overlooked, at any phase of mobile app development. ReactNative flows well with those developers gifted with JavaScript. The widget based development in Flutter on the other hand have made a complete paradigm shift in the app development. It not only makes the development of each UI component faster, but the re-usability gets a new definition here.  The hot reload feature saves a significant amount of developing time while testing UI changes.

DevOps & CI/CD Support

Practices of Continuous Integration & Continuous Delivery are essential for any mobile app. Constant feedback aids in avoiding the release of buggy codes. There are no clear-cut instructions on how to integrate CI/CD approach into apps made with ReactNative. Flutter gets integrated with a section on Continuous Integration & Testing that includes links to external sources. For instance, CodeMagic brings forward inbuilt support for CI/CD; exclusive for mobile apps developed using Flutter. Thus, Flutter apps are easy to be used with right set-ups on CI/CD services by use of Command-Line Interface (CLI) tools.

Conclusion

Upon healthy comparison between Flutter & ReactNative, it becomes clear as a day that these both have pros & cons. Flutter seems to have come up with more cutting edge and advantageous features in the last few releases. However, both ReactNative & Flutter get used by developers for developing the majority of the mobile apps created every day.

Flutter, An open-sourced software development kit (SDK) designed by Google for both Android and iOS platforms is creating quite a buzz around the stream of mobile app development. Flutter is designed to run in both Android and iOS platforms for building cross-platform apps. Flutter is probably the only framework as of now which is capable of generating apps for iOS, Android, Web as well as Desktop from a single code-base. A new avenue for creating cross-platform mobile applications got opened up with the arrival of this technology. Flutter is capable of customizing its UI with most changes getting applied instantly while the mobile app is still in use, a pretty incredible feat indeed.

Let’s look into some of the benefits associated with Flutter: a development environment which aids in creating native experiences for both Android and iOS from a single codebase. As mentioned, the following ones are some benefits: 

• Dart, a new language, is used by Flutter for the creation of high-responsive native apps with a heavy influence from JavaScript and Java. 
• Flutter embedded with its own high-performing 2D rendered engine, SKia, within a thin layer of C, C++ code-wrapping. 
• Based on unidirectional gate-flow architecture or a type of reactive programming, the app reacts according to the convenient new states. 
• The framework of Flutter enriched with UI rendering components.

Flutter: What’s the big deal

The newest, brightest, and smartest SDK can flutter in fast executions with hot reloads. Cross-platform app technology gels well with Flutter as the framework is flexible for developers as well as businesses. For instance, getting a wider user base in a short period helps in gaining valuable customers for your business. Start-ups that rely heavily on releasing apps on cross-platforms benefit quite a bit by using Flutter. The short time needed for execution is indeed a bonus of using this SDK designed by Google. The single codebase of Flutter aids in considerably reducing the time taken for testing as well as quality assurance processes. Flutter mesmerizes us with low development cost, shorter development period and an insanely beautiful & agile application.

Flutter: An Overview 

As is observed with Flutter, developers are still in awe about this application. Ease of development that aids with faster completion of projects make the Flutter a darling among various developers. Flutter has an inherent ability to create native app development fast. An easily extendable capability of code helps developers for creating an app, which works without a server. This SDK tool is evolving fast with Google updating it with cutting edge features in each new release.

Revolutionizing mobile app development via Flutter

Flutter can generate Android as well as an iOS app along with a web & desktop app from the same codebase. Flutter is quite different from other cross-platform toolkits as it offers an engine that has a portable runtime for developing or building the application. The framework gets built upon a new SKia graphics library that provides developers with different gadgets. Thus, Flutter offers much more flexibility than other toolkits. With Flutter, there are no requirements to write native-specific codes in Android and iOS during the mobile app development process. Flutter has a wide widget library that covers most of the components required for a beautiful mobile app. The major advantage of Flutter is that it provides an ideal platform for developers to create cross-platform apps with ease by not settling for any compromises in terms of performance, aesthetics or agility.

Widgets, Widgets and more Widgets

A discussion about Flutter will leave hanging if we are not talking about the widgets, because flutter is all about widgets. Widgets are the basic building blocks of your app. Developers have the freedom to create their widgets that fits well with the whole development process. A major addition to the widgets & Flutter framework is its seamless layout capability. The layout determines the quantity & quality of widgets in use. This also aids in an improved user experience.

Conclusion

Mobile app development is undergoing constant evolution. Flutter, the SDK, designed & released by Google is revolutionizing the way by which this process is carried out. The whole process of mobile app development has become simpler and more agile with the powerful features of this innovative framework. So, what are you waiting for? Be in awe with the possibilities provided by Flutter in mobile app development.