8 Flutter Tips to Make you a Better Flutter Programmer

Flutter is one of the most exceptionally productive application frameworks available today. Making the most of this productivity and maximizing the use of the framework's tooling is something that takes a little practice and patience for many developers. Luckily, nothing builds either of these two things quicker than time spent deploying the platform to build your highly productive apps and services. Here, we share some simple Flutter tips and tricks that have helped us to make better use of the platform over the last few years.

From language tools and essential operators to practical techniques and pragmatic advice on using Flutter well — these 8 tips and tricks will improve your use of the Google platform and build reliability and efficiency into your future applications.

Of course, our remarkable top Flutter development companies have extensive experience and expertise using the platform to build effective and highly-performing applications for their clients since Flutter's release. If you require accomplished Flutter teams to build your apps, then there's no better place to connect with the teams that can accelerate your organization.

8 Key Tips for Effectively Using Flutter

Stick to Simple Widgets

Developers familiar with the SOLID principles of software design will already have this in mind when building in Flutter. It's surprisingly easy, however, to let this one slip by when composing a large and complex interface with Flutter's widgets.

Widgets composed of multiple sup-widgets with vast and often competing responsibilities are one of the most common errors and complications we see in Flutter code. A button that contains several widgets of its own should be broken out into separate pieces of code with well-defined responsibilities.

Our ultimate guide to Flutter development has more essential tips on how to keep your Flutter code manageable and maintainable.

Take Advantage of Null Safety

Something that often trips up even experienced developers is suddenly having new tools to learn and new concepts to apply when writing effective code. Depending on the language and tools you're coming from when picking up Flutter, null-aware operators can fall into that camp.

Taking advantage of null-aware operators such as ??, and ??= can clean up your code, make it easier to understand, and catch a whole host of avoidable errors. With sound null safety now supported in Flutter and Dart, developers should be taking advantage of this as a resource for improving their code.

Google’s Fuchsia operating system relies on Flutter and Dart precisely for the modern platform features available to both technologies.

If you're looking for an effective resource on finding, hiring, and managing teams that can bring the advantages of Flutter into your company, then you should check out our guide to finding the Flutter app development company for your success.

Take Advantage of Flutter Packages

One of Flutter's most productive tools is the package system that allows its developers to make use of readily available, well-tested, and dependable code blocks for their applications. For developers looking to try out several ideas or build a working prototype in a short amount of time, packages are an ideal way to improve application functionality by composing multiple solutions together.

Later in development — when you've tried and tested a variety of ways to implement the app you need — you might want to replace some of these packages with custom code and bespoke functionality. In many production apps, Flutter packages allow developers to build fast and reach their audience sooner than many comparable platforms.

This unique Flutter feature is one of the leading advantages discussed in our guide to the pros and cons of Flutter application development.

Dart Data Classes

Technically speaking, data classes aren't a part of Flutter or Dart — yet. The subject has been a source of debate and a long-term issue that developers have kept open for some time. Developers frequently make use of data classes in Flutter by using a variety of IDE plugins to generate code and boost developer productivity.

Despite not being an official part of the Flutter ecosystem, data classes are one of the most effective tools we regularly use to improve our results with Flutter development.

Make Full Use of Linting

Keeping code clean and tidy from day one of development is many times more efficient than planning a major refactor just before or just after a major milestone marker. Most developers have been in the latter position at one time or another, and it's both a task and state of code that few would like to repeat.

Including linting tools at the start of your project is the best way to ensure code is written following the right rules and standards from day one. Dart's own lint package is easy to set up and use to effectively guarantee code quality.

Use Flutter Snippets

Nothing accelerates productivity in Flutter quite like code snippets. A deceptively simple tool for developers, snippets allow you to create entire methods and classes with just a few keystrokes. These shortcuts can save developers a lot of time building, and provide a large boost to productivity.

Simply typing StreamBldr into an IDE and pressing enter will instantly create an entire StreamBuilder Widget. These tools save developers from hours of boilerplate code on every project and allow focus to be shifted to the parts of code that really matter.

The ability to use highly productive snippets like these is a significant advantage of Flutter development, and one worth considering when comparing the framework to other available tools. Taking a look at Flutter against Facebook's React Native framework, our article highlights the advantages and drawbacks of both when comparing tools for your next project.

Onboard Users with an Introduction Screen

The first seconds and minutes a user spends with your app are the most critical when it comes to keeping their attention. If an app is too complex and can't be worked out in a few swipes and taps, then you risk losing that user for good. This is particularly important in highly competitive marketplaces such as Android and iOS application development.

Flutter's introduction screen package is a tool that allows you to easily create a friendly tutorial explanation for your app without designing all the menus, transitions, and flow of the tutorial manually. Experienced developers will recognize what a significant advantage and huge time saver this tool is when onboarding users easily.

Create Eye-Catching Icons in Minutes

Another way to capture the interest and attention of users is to make your app visually attractive, unique, and pleasing to use. Flutter's font awesome tools allow you to do that without requiring extensive design credentials or a custom-built design library.

Font Awesome has a suite of icons and customizations that allow you to build an app that stands out among the crowd with a visual style that suits the domain.

One of the major advantages of Flutter development is its UI design credentials. Using eye-catching icons and resources your developers can readily create applications that are consistent across Linux, macOS, and Windows desktop environments.

Improving your Flutter Apps

These 8 Flutter tips can accelerate the uptake and appreciation of your apps almost overnight. With some practice on the techniques and deployment of the tools — you can improve your apps in structure, design, and visual appeal.

Of course, if you're looking for teams to build outstanding apps for your company and services, each of our top Flutter development companies can use their time, experience, and knowledge invested in the platform to build exceptional things for your business.

Remember to keep these tips, tricks, and tools in mind the next time you review modern Flutter code and you might just be able to make the improvements that save a great deal of time.

FAQs:

Q1. How do I get better at Fluttering?

The single best thing you can do to improve your skills in Flutter and Dart is to immerse yourself in reading its code. Start with an open source app or tool that you know and take a look at the code that makes it work and the documentation that supports it. Some key questions to answer when looking at this code include:

• If you were going to build this app or feature, how would you do it? Where would you start?
• If you were to extend this tool with new functionality, how would you do it? What features would you add? How and where would you add them?

Design on pen and paper as much as you write in an IDE to figure out the broader architecture and design as well as the implementation specifics.

When you're ready, you can take another step forward and contribute to open source projects by providing documentation, articles, and eventually code to your favorite projects.

Q2. What are the best practices in Flutter?

Flutter is known for being exceptionally performant, but there are actions developers can take to improve the framework's already impressive credentials. Flutter’s best development practices aim to create cleaner, more performant, and more maintainable code to improve the longevity and use of today's Flutter apps. These practices include:

• Minimizing the use of expensive operations and calls. This aspect of the design is particularly important inside build() methods, as these are frequently invoked and costly operations will be often repeated.
• Minimizing the use of UI opacity. The opacity widget is a costly UI operation that should be used as sparingly as possible.
• Taking care with lists and grids. Long lists and large grids can be exceptionally expensive in performance if they're not used with care. Here, it pays to be lazy. Using lazy builder methods allows Flutter to only construct the visible portion of lists and grids to save on resources at startup.
• Everything must be built and rendered in 16ms or less. Best practice keeps this limitation of 60fps in mind to create a smooth app experience for the end user.

Q3. Do you need coding for flutter?

Yes, you need to write code to build Flutter applications. The Flutter platform relies on Google's Dart programming language to create applications. For many developers, this might present a hurdle to getting started with the framework, but it's less of a burden than many think.

Dart is a language that's simple to get to grips with and comes with abundant resources and documentation to assist with learning. Those that already know JavaScript will be off to a head-start when building in Dart.

The features and functionality that Dart offers to developers over and above what JavaScript can do are tools that assist in building robust, reliable, and modern web apps. Today, Dart offers object-oriented design, sound type safety, and exceptional speed amongst its abundant advantages over the web's default language. With some understanding of the basic syntax, developers can often jump right in and start building exceptional Flutter apps by learning through coding and use.