My First Week As A Flutter Developer
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to work with the flutter framework as a developer in 2023? Well look no further this article was made specifically for you.
As a young techie I have done my fair share of exploring the tech world, carrying out research on hot and trending technologies and also got the chance to work with a few of them. Well, I think I need to say this to all the techie out there and most especially if you are considering venturing into the tech world and you finally found that thing that sparks your interest and you would like to explore it. First, I would like to welcome you into the world of technology and secondly do not stop there I mean why stop with one while there are so many new worlds to conquer, new technologies that are shaping our future as we know it.
Not only will you get a chance to explore new worlds but you also get the chance to experience these technologies and decide what works best for you because you will be spending a lot of your time working with this technology you might as well have fun while doing it.
Before we dive any deeper, I think it’s best we start with what flutter actually is
WHAT IS FLUTTER?
Flutter is a cross platform framework that allows a developer to build applications for different platforms all in one go having to maintain only just one codebase.
As a java/android developer flutter was like the answer to all my secrets prayers like I found my pot of gold, coming from the native (platform dependent) development environment where the development time is relatively slow with so many lines of code achieving very little output, having to manage multiple XML files for different screens. it was mind blowing how fast and with so little amount of code, I was able to create a very basic app with little efforts yielding great output and the best part was I didn’t just create an Android app I also created an app for iPhones as well. What? did I just die and went to tech heaven?
It has been an all-round joyous experience but there has to be a balance when it comes to its many advantages flutter has some disadvantages as well its only natural, most times in development there is always a tradeoff just like with any technology out there
I noticed some pitfalls with the flutter framework like how its implementation language is the dart programming language, believe me it’s a great programming language but it doesn’t have much use cases outside of flutter. I mean why not support one of the native programming languages like Swift or Java?
one of its major disadvantages is that dart the implementation language for flutter cannot make direct calls to native api’s, you still have to do it manually inside the folders where the native platforms code is being generated. It also has a ridiculously large file size, all apps built with the flutter framework are very large in size the more functionality and dependencies the application has the bigger it gets in size.
There are a lot more disadvantages but these are the ones I found most disturbing. so that’s it my first week as a flutter developer
Conclusion
Flutter is really an amazing framework the flutter team are doing an amazing job; I know that there are a lot of people out there with a lot of reasons why you shouldn’t learn flutter but if you are like me that is going to develop the next big thing all you need is not to find a thousand reasons you shouldn’t venture into flutter but to find just one solid one to get started all you need is one reason
And also, flutter is still in its early stages most of the pitfalls today will be obsolete tomorrow because the flutter team is working tirelessly to make its disadvantages today, into tomorrow’s strength.
