A guide to getting started with Flutter

#flutter

Introduction ☄️

Flutter is one of the most popular cross-platform frontend frameworks for developing mobile, desktop, and web applications. With the community and usage growing there are now a bunch of plugins and extensions available for developers. The framework makes use of the dart programming language by Google .

In this article, my goal is to help getting started with Flutter development. And give some structure to the process of learning flutter.

Whats Flutter?

Flutter is Google's UI toolkit for building beautiful, natively compiled applications for mobile, web, desktop, and embedded devices from a single codebase.

Why Flutter ?

It's cross-platform , developers build applications once and run them on multiple platforms.
Flutter has been trending miles ahead of react-native for the last 12 months and this seems to just be the start

Flutter comes with great documentation and a great community of developers https://flutter.dev/docs
Firebase support , makes it easy for developers to integrate apps to Firebase

Honestly , there's a bunch of reasons to go for flutter for mobile development right now and it would require a whole article to exhaust the benefits. But the above are the key ones

Learning flutter and becoming a competent mobile application developer will fulfill your financial needs easily. Check out the stats on mobile apps revenue right now and in the next 2 years!!. 💸 💵

Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/269025/worldwide-mobile-app-revenue-forecast/

Quick blueprint for developing an app on Flutter 🦥

Come up with a solid concept of your idea
Design the user interface and experience
Develop the application
Test and debug your application
Deploy your application on Apple Store and Google Playstore
Celebrate your win!! 😛 😝 😜

Learning roadmap 🛣

1. Start with the basics

Have some basic knowledge of dart it's the programming language behind dart

Dart Docs

2. Read Flutter Docs

Flutter Site
Flutter Tutorial

2.1 Watch a crash course

Brad Travesy offers a great introduction to flutter on his YouTube channel.

3. Build a simple Flutter Application

Design-your-first-flutter-app
Scrum Pocker App
Create Flutter App in 5 Days

Bonus: Top 5 features from the new Flutter 2.0 you should know about 🌋

Web support is now has a stable version
It comes with Sound Null Safety
Beta support for desktop (Windows, Linux, or macOS)
Beta version for Google Mobile Ads
New IOS widgets in the Cupertino widget

Extra Resources 💾

Flutter Resources

Documentation: https://docs.flutter.io/

Github: https://github.com/flutter/flutter

StackOverflow: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/flutter

Gitter: https://gitter.im/flutter/flutter

Effective Dart Guide: https://www.dartlang.org/guides/language/effective-dart

Dart Tips: https://www.dartlang.org/resources/dart-tips

Flutter FAQ: https://flutter.io/faq/

Flutter Rendering: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUfXWzp0-DU

Flutter Engine: https://github.com/flutter/engine/wiki

Hot Reload: https://flutter.io/hot-reload/

Flutter Inspector: https://dart-lang.github.io/observatory/

Dart Style Guide: https://www.dartlang.org/guides/language/effective-dart/style

Dart Observatory: https://dart-lang.github.io/observatory/

Flutter Widgets: https://flutter.io/widgets/

Flutter Gallery App Code: https://github.com/flutter/flutter/tree/master/examples/flutter_gallery

Flutter Gallery Android App: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.flutter.demo.gallery

Flutter Layout: https://flutter.io/tutorials/layout/

Material: https://material.io

Icons: https://thenounproject.com

Images: https://unsplash.com

Fonts: https://fonts.google.com

Google APIs: https://pub.dartlang.org/packages/googleapis

Async and Futures: https://www.dartlang.org/tutorials/language/futures

Testing: https://flutter.io/testing/