How to learn Flutter & What is Flutter

 

Flutter is an open-source framework by Google for building beautiful, natively compiled, multi-platform applications from a single codebase.

Fast

Flutter code compiles to ARM or Intel machine code as well as JavaScript, for fast performance on any device.

Productive

Build and iterate quickly with Hot Reload. Update code and see changes almost instantly, without losing state.

Flexible

Control every pixel to create customized, adaptive designs that look and feel great on any screen.

Flutter has become popular due to the flexibility of quickly building apps and the ease of language learning. Whether you are a seasoned developer or a novice, learning Flutter will just take a few enlightening videos, online and offline learning resources, and a lot of self-learning. In this article, we'll walk you through each of them, but before that - you should know what you need to know before you know Flutter!

What is Flutter?

Developed by Google, Flutter is an open-source framework (instead of an SDK) primarily used for mobile application development. We can also develop web and desktop versions of the same application using a single database. Flutter consists of many beautifully designed tools, a rich set of APIs for motion, scrolling and navigation, fonts, and icons that work across platforms. This ensures smooth performance on both Android and iOS phones. Flutter apps are compiled natively, and thus are high-performance and fast.

Why should you learn to flutter?

Mobile app development is the trend in 2021. It is more convenient to view and perform actions on mobile because we can do it from anywhere and at any time. A fully customizable framework that allows you to create a highly expressive and flexible user interface, Flutter is easy to learn and allows for faster development. If these reasons are not enough, here are some reasons why you should learn Flutter:

• No cross-platform issues: Flutter takes a write-once approach as it is pre-compiled, giving native code experience.
• No refactoring required: Quick Reload allows developers to see code changes once they've been saved.
• Great community and support: The flutter team is very helpful, and the community offers great support to new learners.
• Create endless animations with 2Dimension Flare.
• Support many IDEs like VS Code, Android Studio, etc.
• Single code for frontend and backend using Dart. language

Features of Flutter

One last thing before we give you the resources to learn flutter, it is important for you to know so that you can just dig into the resources and have hands-on learning without having to go for an introduction yet again!

Some unique features of Flutter are:

• Focus on Customizable widgets, all sets of widgets from material design and Cupertino pack (rather than android XML) are available to provide hassle-free UI development.
• Hot reload helps developers see their changes instantly. This reduces development time as well as bug fixing time.
• Write-once, run anywhere code that runs on any platform without changes. 
• Flutter uses Dart programming language that uses both ahead of time and just in time compilation giving high performance and faster start up time.
• Native ARM machine code allows for native performance on both Android and iOS.

Prerequisites for Learning Flutter

Your familiarity with the following is quite necessary to start learning Flutter. If you have no idea about any of the below, it is better to grab those concepts first and then continue with the Flutter journey:

• Knowledge of native Android development: that is if you want to develop very fine and detailed applications 
• OOPS Concepts: As languages like Java, C++ are based on OOPS concepts, it is important to be thorough with them. Here is a nice video that easily explains OOPS.
• You should know Dart programming before you can learn Flutter: but that's easy too. Dart is Google's general-purpose programming language. Hackr.io lists some good courses that can help you get on Dart fast and easily.
• Knowing C++/Java is an added advantage but not mandatory!

How to Learn Flutter?

Now is a good time to start learning Flutter. There are many resources on the internet, and information overload can be overwhelming. That's why we have come up with the best resources that can help you learn Flutter in the right way. There is a lot of documentation available on the official flutter website, but you should refer to other resources for more depth and variety.

1. Online Videos and documentation

A lot of sample videos and documentation are available on the official website.

You should also check out the Widget of the week on YouTube that covers a widget from the SDK. If you need quick hands-on about a widget – this is the place to go.

2. Online tutorials

Hackr's Flutter tutorial link has a list of some of the best free and paid courses. Flutter & Dart is a good course wherein you can learn both Dart and Flutter at once. Similarly, getting started with Flutter is a good beginner's course that you can take up for free.

3. Books

Books are a great way to get in-depth knowledge about any subject as well as reference material. Some of the best books to learn Flutter are:

Learn Google Flutter fast

Beginning Flutter – A hands-on guide to App Development

As a beginner, you should be able to gather much from just these 2 books.

Examples from GitHub 

You can start or enhance your Flutter skills using the samples, demos, and examples created by the Flutter community on GitHub. Try the UI examples first, some of them are available on the app store – this will help you view how an application works in real-time.