Hello, Flutter!
I have been toying with Flutter for the past 2 months now and here is my take on it.
Being an essential part of my internship during me final semester at Mesa College I was assigned to learn the framework. At first it was intimidating to create mock-ups for a mobile application we were working on.
After reviewing other candidates (namely React Native and Ionos) we selected Flutter. The cross-platform compatibility and edge in customization which would future-proof any development changes in the future.
The Development
The overall installation process was pretty painless, I followed the main Flutter documentation here. Once I launched my first project, a demo UI application, I began to feel that sense of being overwhelmed. After looking at a foreign syntax and the array of new file types I never heard of (Am I late to the yaml party ?) I started to get confused.
My fears quelled however once after toying around the environment for a few hours something in my head clicked; “It’s just like if JavaScript and CSS had a baby!”. Something like that. Secondly, I will say it did take me a minute to get the hand of the tree structure and nesting of widgets. However a few tweaks of VSCode settings seemed to do the trick in seeing how clean my syntax was. Finally, things were looking up!
Logging In
As of now I am able to produce this login screen from a wire frame mock-up given to me. I must say it’s about 90% there. I am working on more readable text and need to integrate the keyboard input. Google Firebase authorization for actually logging in the application is another task here, but I am content with the development so far.
Hello, Flutter!