Don’t do this mistake while learning Flutter!
Flutter is a great technology right? Just now started learning Flutter? Let’s see some of the major mistakes that people do when learning Flutter.
Flutter was first introduced to Developer Community in 2018 and since then, Flutter and Flutter Community is growing rapidly! But, usually people make few mistakes while learning Flutter and soon they loose interest in it or get stuck. Let’s see which are those mistakes!
0. Atleast learn OOP Concepts before Flutter!
This is the most important point. If you don’t know Native Development, still you will be able to learn Flutter. But if you don’t know OOP Concepts, it will become really difficult for you to learn Flutter. However, knowing Native Development (Android or iOS) is always a plus point for Flutter.
1. Don’t just watch tutorials or read documentation. Build!
Watching just tutorial or reading documentation won’t make you become a good developer. This is a general mistake developers do, no matter which language. People just watch the tutorials and don’t practice the same. One should also build at least a small project from what you have learnt.
2. Don’t code while watching tutorials
Yes. You shouldn’t code while watching tutorials. Instead, watch 3–4 videos and then code the same again without watching them. If you code along with the instructor, it’s the instructor guiding you and not you who are making the efforts. Now if you really code along with instructor, at the end of course you will definitely feel that you have learned flutter, but you will soon realize that you are not able to code the app from scratch by your own!
3. Whatever you build, upload on GitHub!
Whatever you build for practice, you should upload on GitHub, even if it is just a small counter app. This will make you proficient in Git along with Flutter. It will also eventually create your GitHub profile.
4. You should explore why certain widgets are used!
Flutter has tons of widgets available. So you should start exploring why particular widget was used. For example, you should explore why MaterialApp is used or why Scaffold is used or is it possible to create app without MaterialApp? Getting answers of these questions will make you understand particular widgets more better. This will gain more confident to you and you will soon start understanding where to use which widgets.
5. Start with UI or App Cloning
Flutter is first of all UI Toolkit. So it is must that you should have a good grip on developing UI using Flutter. This will make you understand the Flutter Widget Tree and how Flutter renders the widget.
6. Learn how to debug your code!
Stop using print statements everywhere! print statements are of course handy but is considered a curse in IT Industry. Instead, if you wish to use print, you can use logs. The best way to debug your code is using breakpoints. This way you will also understand the flow of your app or any library you are using.
7. Publish at least one package on pub.dev
This will help you understand how you can publish your own package. It will also make you understand how other packages work. You can also publish a simple UI package like AnimatedButton or something. But publishing your own package will also make you understand how you can manage your package, how you can version them based on new changes, how to handle issues and pull requests on GitHub, etc.
Don’t stop, until you are breathing!💙
- Abhishek Doshi
