On My Own

As I am about to start my Capstone, I find myself wondering what life will be like outside of the Flatiron School. Currently, I have a whole Slack app filled with support. Instructors with Zoom rooms, students only a message away, and tech-question threads that seem to go on forever. Now, I can definitely find some of these features outside of school, like help threads and people to message in places like the Denver Devs Slack channel, but access to teachers on call is not going to be a thing anymore.

I already feel like I am losing the support from teachers. Deciding to branch off into a new language /framework, I am off on my adventure through uncharted territory. Choosing to go with Dart/Flutter, a framework developed by Google, I do not think any of my instructors really understand the language. Then again, maybe they do, all I have to do is ask. Might as well ask right now… Done

What I have discovered is that there are plenty of resources available online. I paid 40 dollars for a license to a class on Academind, which was recommended by a colleague, and I’m only 8 hours in and I’ve learned so much. The class so far has taught me Dart syntax, all about Flutter widgets (widgets make up a Flutter app), how to set up my environment (including Android Studio & emulators), as well as a ton of different properties and methods to get shit done. I even made a personality quiz app already, and next I’m going to make a personal finance tracker which I might actually use on my phone before publishing.

Branching out into this new language has greatly inspired me to continue learning, even without support from the school. I am excited to learn and develop Flutter applications. When learning React, I found it kind of odd. It felt like React barely gives you anything to work with. To me, React just seemed like a fancier way of writing Vanilla Javascript. Maybe I’ll like Angular or Vue better, and maybe I’ll feel just as inspired to learn them, but for right now it’s just me and Flutter. Flutter seems smart.

I have 3 weeks to come up with a sick project in Flutter, and I still have to finish learning the language. I keep getting distracted but from this point forward, there’s no distractions. Focus is on my mind, and Flutter is my grind. Wake up: Flutter. Go to bed: Flutter. Eat lunch: Flutter. Tie my shoe: Flutter. Everything: Flutter. From there, I aim to have two weeks to work on my project. No exceptions.