Flutter from a Junior Developer’s Perspective
The encounters of a new flutter developer.
It has been about a year since I heard about flutter but I have been building flutter apps for about 3 months now. I was previously only developing mobile apps in android using Java and moving to flutter has been the best tech decision I’ve made this year (I’m not exaggerating).
This is why I think Flutter is the way to go:
1. Rapid App Development
There are many convenient tools than can shorten the development time(discussed more at point 3). The cross platform feature also means that the development time and the resources required are less. This makes it cheaper to go the flutter way.
It is also easier for a developer, as there is only one code-base for both platforms. Therefore, tasks like testing are only done once and hence the learning curve is manageable. There is also good documentation for the SDK which can help you through the learning process.
2. Sleek Design
Flutter offers beautiful UI components that are sleek and smooth to give it a native feel. You can utilize both Material Components widgets and Cupertino widgets. The components are also fully customizable which makes it flexible and expressive.
Creating UI animations in the past was a pain in the neck but with flutter you can integrate animations seamlessly.
3. Development Tools
There are several tools that have made my life easier as a flutter developer. From the vast range of IDEs that you can use (which include Visual Studio Code, Android Studio, JetBrains among others), to awesome inbuilt features such as HotReload. This feature allows you to see changes on the UI without having to re-run the application.
There is an online flutter UI development platform I learnt about recently that is known as Flutter Studio. It allows you to drag and drop UI components. This comes in very handy, especially when creating complex user interfaces and it also shortens the development time. Flutter’s DevTools is also quite helpful. It helps in debugging the UI, memory issues, among other things.
All these tools and much more are there to make your life easier so that you can concentrate on what makes your app special.
4. Variety of free themes to kick-start development
There are so many free themes that you can use to accelerate your development. Some of the sites that have these themes include: Start Flutter, Flutter Awesome, It’s All Widgets, among others.
These themes could also spark your creativity when it comes to the user interface, as it shows the different ways you can work with the components to design and develop a friendly and elegant UI/UX.
5. Cross-Platform
One code base for both iOS and Android was definitely a plus for me. I have never developed an iOS app before and I was super excited for this. This lowers the development costs for companies looking to have presence in both the Google Play Store and the iOS App Store.
Flutter also allows a developer to use both native android material design components as well as some native iOS design components.
Check out Flutter’s documentation on more information.
Bonus: If you are a beginner, attend community meetups and events. They offer great support.
Build awesome apps.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is equivalent to magic. ~ Sir Arthur C. Clarke
