Explain what is meant by 'late' in the context of programming or system development.

In programming, for example in the Dart language (used in Flutter), the keyword late indicates deferred initialization of a variable.

This means that the variable is declared without an initial value, but it is guaranteed to be initialized before its first use. This allows avoiding the use of nullable types and postponing object creation until it is actually needed.

Example in Dart:

late String description;

void setup() {
  description = 'Deferred initialized string';
}

void main() {
  setup();
  print(description);  // Will output the string
}

Attempting to access description before assigning a value will throw an exception.

Thus, late helps manage the timing of variable initialization, improving performance and code safety.