What I learned after 7 years in IT
Part 1: The Intro
It all started 10 years ago when a was a young careless boy that was in college with nothing on my mind, just playing some games and hanging out with my friends. Then suddenly, two weeks after I graduated I got my first job!
My passion is exploring new stuff and learning it to become the best in that.
Nothing holds my interest for long, that’s the reason why I learned a lot of different programming languages and tried out different frameworks. Ranging from low-level programming languages like Pascal, C++ to high levels like Java, Python, Kotlin, Swift. I tried it all out, from backend development, frontend, and over to mobile apps. Started game and IoT development, and now switched to writing.
The IT industry has changed a lot in these 7 years, I still remembered when I started out as a junior dev building websites. Life was simple, things didn’t move that fast, new frameworks didn’t pop out of anywhere like these days so you could focus on only one and learn it in your own peace.
Apps were simpler and didn’t have to cover every possible combination of device resolution, capability, and browser compatibility. In order to succeed it was enough to release a website and do some marketing. Unlike today where you need to invest in marketing, SEO, be present on every God damn social platform, and still not succeed because the competition is too big.
Pro-Tip
It was a roallercoaster of emotions.
If you want to succeed in IT you should choose your career wisely, stick to one area and spend 10.000 hours on it to become a professional.
This wasn’t very helpful in my case since I liked to try out new stuff. I moved from frontend and backend development to Android, and then later to iOS, and now to Flutter and writing.
I managed to stick to Android development for 5 years and also to do some freelance jobs alongside and in the end, I managed to get those 10k hours and consider myself as a professional (also I have the title and portfolio to speak for myself). I can only say that it was a rollercoaster of emotions to work with Android for that long. Why you may ask?
Well, for starters each year you need to catch up with a new Andriod OS version and a lot of changes and new features that came along with it. But that wasn’t the biggest pain, you also had a lot of new libraries that became mainstream and also some not so familiar 3rd party SDK that a client decided to use so you need to learn them also. Then Google switched from Java to Kotlin, which was nice and enjoyable refreshment. Following that, you had Jetpack libraries, which are a nice addition but also a ton of new stuff to learn and master.
The point is that mobile development is moving fast forward (different screen sizes, ML and AI support, foldable screens…) and you need a lot of time and energy to catch up, especially if you are working on Android and iOS. And if you add Flutter to that mix then everything just explodes and you find yourself overwhelmed and lost in time and space!
That’s why I decided to continue only with Flutter development (which still requires some knowledge of Android and iOS but in a much less manner) and start a new position in a different country (soon more on that).
Why do I believe that Flutter is the next big thing?
As my background was developing for PC, web, and mobile where I needed to know different programming languages and to write the code specifically for each platform with different teams where each team had its own vision and idea how to implement something, I strongly believe that using one programming language and once codebase is the best way to go!
One codebase to rule them all.
It is also much more efficient and sustainable to have fewer developers that collaborate together to create stunning apps for all platforms than to have multiple teams that don’t function together. If you want to succeed in today's world you need to cover every possible device and get the biggest possible coverage.
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