A peak at the best resources to learn Flutter for free in 2023.

You’ve seen and used beautiful, high-performance mobile apps for iOS and Android.

But would you like to build them?

One great way is with Flutter.

Flutter is the revolutionary open-source SDK that makes it possible.

Flutter's rich set of widgets, stateful Hot Reload, and modern reactive framework offer a fast and enjoyable way to develop mobile apps.

Let’s learn what makes Flutter special and why you should consider adding it to your development toolkit.

What is Flutter?

Flutter is an open-source mobile app SDK created by Google and released in 2017.

It provides a modern framework, widget set and tools to allow developers to quickly and easily build mobile apps for both iOS and Android from a single Dart codebase.

Flutter compiles to native ARM code rather than JavaScript, allowing your apps to achieve native-like performance.

The Flutter engine manages your app's UI, rendering, gestures, animations and more across platforms.

On top of this engine sits the Flutter framework, including widgets like Material Design and Cupertino, layouts, navigation, testing and more.

Why Learn Flutter?

Flutter offers many advantages that make it a great choice for mobile development:

• Build for iOS and Android from one codebase - Write once and deploy your Flutter apps to both iOS and Android. No more maintaining separate Objective-C/Swift and Java/Kotlin projects!
• Native performance - Flutter compiles to native code, unlike some cross-platform options that use JavaScript runtimes and can suffer performance issues.
• Expressive and flexible UI - Flutter's layered, composable widget set allows you to easily construct beautiful, responsive UIs. The framework is flexible enough for pixel-perfect iOS or Material Design Android interfaces.
• Live Reloads - See changes instantly without needing to rebuild or restart your app. This hot reload development cycle vastly speeds up development and debugging.
• Open source with great documentation - Flutter is developed by Google and has an active open-source community. The documentation is excellent for learning the SDK.
• Future-proof - Flutter is growing fast and has long-term support from Google and partners. It's a safe bet for your next mobile project.

Flutter Vs. Other Frameworks

Compared to other popular cross-platform mobile options, Flutter has some standout strengths:

• Flutter offers better native performance than React Native, which relies on JavaScript bridges to communicate with native components.
• Flutter's reactive framework avoids the complexity of hybrid technologies like Ionic or Cordova that overlay web views on native projects.
• Flutter doesn't require platform-specific implementations like Xamarin, allowing you to share more code across iOS and Android.
• Flutter Hot Reload provides faster iteration than React Native's live reloads or native compilation times.
• Flutter's rich widget set makes building custom UIs simpler compared to React Native's imperative views.

Of course, these other frameworks have their own advantages too in certain situations.

But for most mobile apps, Flutter provides the best combination of native performance, shared codebase, expressive UIs, and rapid development. Its growing community and documentation make Flutter a great choice to learn today.

Let’s take a look at the 6 top resources to learn Flutter for free:

#1 - The Official Flutter Docs

The Official Flutter Documentation is a great resource to get started and designed to cater to developers at all levels.

The platform offers a variety of learning formats including codelabs, YouTube videos, and in-depth articles.

The docs guide you from getting started with basic programming in Flutter to mastering advanced techniques, ensuring you're well-equipped to stay current with the latest updates and changes in the framework.

#2 - Google for Developers

The "Build Apps with Flutter" tutorials on Google for Developers offer step-by-step guides to creating various types of applications using Flutter.

These tutorials aim to teach you how to create aesthetically pleasing and natively compiled apps for desktop, mobile, and web platforms from a single codebase.

The Codelab tutorial instructs you on developing a Flutter app that generates unique, catchy names.

This beginner-friendly project introduces key Flutter features, including responsiveness to different screen sizes and basic user interactions like favouriting and reviewing names.

#3 - Flutter Crash Course

The Flutter Crash Course offers a suite of free courses aimed at turning beginners into proficient Flutter developers.

The courses are fully updated for Flutter v3.x and cover a wide range of topics through various formats including video lessons.

The "Basics" course provides an in-depth introduction to Flutter, featuring 19 videos and over 5 hours of content that focus on fundamental elements like text, images, layout, and widgets.

Meanwhile, the "Flutter for Junior Devs" module is tailored for developers with less than a year of experience, consisting of 5 videos that last 1 hour and 50 minutes, to quickly equip you with a solid grasp of both Flutter and Dart programming.

#4 - Codecademy

Codecademy's "Intro to Flutter" course offers interactive lessons designed to give you a solid foundation in the Flutter framework.

Focused on multi-platform application development—including mobile, web, and desktop—this course takes you through the essentials of Flutter development.

It covers basic components and layouts, equipping you with the skills to create simple apps that can be deployed across various platforms.

After completing the course, you'll be well-prepared to start building versatile Flutter applications.

#5 - GeeksForGeeks

GeeksForGeeks offers a Flutter Tutorial for both new and experienced developers, covering an extensive range of topics from the fundamentals to advanced concepts within the Flutter framework.

This guide goes into various aspects such as the framework's architecture, setup procedures in Android Studio and Ubuntu 20.04, and essential Flutter features including key widgets, UI components, design and animations, forms and gestures, navigation and routing, as well as hardware interactions.

The tutorial also provides examples of sample Flutter apps to help reinforce learning.

#6 - TutorialsPoint

TutorialsPoint's Flutter Tutorial is designed for anyone looking to establish a career in mobile application development.

This in-depth guide presumes that readers have a foundational understanding of frameworks, Object-Oriented Programming, the Android framework, and Dart programming.

It aims to speed up your learning journey in the Flutter framework and its functionalities.

Bonus - YouTube Videos

As we know, YouTube has become the ultimate hub for learning resources and is full of resources for learning Flutter.

Here are a few great tutorials:

• Flutter Course for Beginners - by freeCodeCamp
• Flutter Full Crash Course for Beginners - by Aditya Thakur
• Flutter Tutorial For Beginners in 3 Hours - by Flutter Mapp

Learning new skills can feel daunting, but diving into Flutter is one of the best investments you can make right now. Trust me, I've been there!

But if you take that leap, soon you’ll be able to build for iOS and Android from a single codebase, iterate faster with hot reload, and take advantage of Flutter's awesome widgets and community resources.

Your apps will look better and launch quicker than ever before.

We all get comfortable with certain tools, but shaking things up keeps us versatile and employable. And Flutter is only growing in popularity!

It doesn't matter if you've never heard of Dart before or still consider yourself an amateur.

Start small, be patient with yourself, and have fun exploring.

Before you know it, you'll be creating beautiful, high-quality app experiences.

Where Code Flutters, Ideas Take Flight!

From your fellow ever-growing dev,

Cherlock Code

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