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Goal
Treat isolates as a Dart language + runtime feature; Flutter only adds ergonomics on top.
Dart VM and CLI
dart:isolateworks in command-line Dart, servers, and Flutter desktop or mobile when you need extra isolates.- Flutter’s
computehelper wraps isolate work for widgets; the underlying idea is the same.
One default isolate
- Your program starts on the main isolate. Long synchronous CPU work there delays timers, stream events, and frame work on that isolate.
Mental model
- An isolate is a separate memory space with its own event loop. You do not share mutable objects across isolates; you send messages or use APIs like
Isolate.runthat copy data in and out.
Practice tasks
- Skim
dart:isolateAPI docs and list three class names you saw besidesIsolate. - Note one Flutter API name that delegates to isolates for image decoding or JSON (search Flutter docs).