I Switched To Flutter From Native Android Development- My Story
By: Start Up Code Nigeria
Tags: Mobile Dev Platforms, Android, Flutter

After a few years a web developer, I delved fully into mobile development(specifically native android development) in 2016. For more than three years, I worked on five projects that opened me up into the world of Java and android. Mid-way, I delved into core Java coding too. It was fun and cool, I landed a job that payed me well. I loved java, I loved the structure, the rules, the way it forced me to observe standard coding patterns. Well until… my friend came to me with a job from a client.

Magical Flutter

The client wanted an iOS and Android versions of a mini-banking app. Prior to this moment, I had experience building just for android. I hadn’t written enough of Swift/Objective-C to take on such a project. Well, once, I converted java code from an android app into platform specific, code for iOS (in Objective-C) using Multi-Engine OS. The experience was fairly immersing, but not too deep.

So I took the job, and immediately I just knew, my only option was flutter. I’m not a big fan of Javascript and excessive usage of command terminals, so I didn’t go for React Native. I had 15 days to deliver the job, meaning, I had 15 days to learn dart, flutter framework, plugins, resources, layouts, structures, build the app, debug and test on both platforms and deploy. I was in for it, but I was excited. I delved in. Long story cut short — After a lot of hours spent perusing Stackoverflow, and Github pages, I delivered the apps within 18 days. Damn! But the experience was amazing. Everything was clicking, responsive. I didn’t have to struggle with separating layouts from classes. I didn’t have to struggle with creating over three classes just to implement something similar to a recyclerview. By the time I was done, I was hooked on flutter and I stuck with it.

Till date, I haven’t been writing much of Java, I’ve rebuilt my company’s mobile apps in flutter, I’ve rebuilt selected features of past projects in flutter, and I’m currently working on a bunch flutter apps. I’ve come across several tools and I’ve met a lot of amazing people within the flutter community.

Flutter is a powerful framework, that absolves you away from the roughest aspects of mobile development . Of course cross-platform development isn’t without its own issues and no matter how good a programmer you are, the app might not give you the 100% performance compared to native apps. All the same, flutter offers you speed, high level efficiency, out of the box animations, responsive material design, flutter apps are already optimized by default and there is also a lossless compression feature that removes all unused classes and dead code within your flutter app. Its called “tree shaking”.

Flutter is still new, and the community is grown and active, you’re guaranteed support and continuity. No worries, your project is safe with flutter. Flutter developers, who don’t have access to a mac, can build once on windows, and build iOS versions of the app using a free platform like Codemagic.io .

As long as flutter remains effective, I think I’ll stay with it!