From 0 to Mobile App Developer in 12 Months: The Complete Roadmap
The selection of the appropriate programming language and framework is an essential choice in your career. Native development Swift is used with iOS and Kotlin with Android, and cross-platform solutions exist, such as React Native (with JavaScript), Flutter (with Dart), Kotling Multiplatform, and .NET MAUI (with C#). Both frameworks are strong in their own way, although React Native and Flutter are incredibly popular because they are based on a strong ecosystem and are needed on the job market. The decision that you make should be based on your available skills and the employment opportunities available in your area.
In addition to the code, one should have a good background knowledge of version control systems such as Git, data structures, algorithm, and design patterns to ensure success in the long run. Git provides the ability to work in a team and handle code, and learning data structures and algorithms will enhance problem-solving abilities, which are frequently assessed during technical interviews. The knowledge of design patterns, described in the book The Gang of Four, can give you an idea of how to deal with typical software design problems, and the more you can do, the better you will design with contemporary mobile frameworks. Don't just dream about building apps – make it happen. Start your journey today and become a skilled mobile app developer in just 12 months with this comprehensive roadmap.
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Native vs. Cross-Platform Development
Five primary required skills to be a mobile app developer are as follows. Let's go over them one by one. Mobile apps can be built in basically two ways, native or cross-platform. In native development, we have the ability to create an application that is only functional within a specific platform, such as iOS or Android.
This method provides us with complete control over the capabilities of the target platform, which leads to high performance and the most pleasant user experience. The disadvantage however, is that when you wish to develop the same app on a different platform, you must do so by creating another project on a completely different language and ecosystem. It implies that there are two different projects and two different bugs to fix.
That is where cross-platform or multi-platform development comes to the bailout. Cross-platform development helps us to save on development time when we are reusing the same piece of code to work on different platforms, and possibly save on bugs. Fixing bugs once implies that they are fixed in more than one platform.
Programming Languages and Frameworks
We can now have a choice of a couple of options when it comes to native development. In the case of iOS, we are able to work with the older Objective-C language or with Swift which is up to date and preferred. In the case of Android, we can apply Java, as a more traditional language, or Kotlin, as a more modern and the most preferred. In the case of cross-platform development, this choice is determined by the framework or toolkit that we adopt. The number of cross-platform toolkits such as React Native, Flutter, Kotlin Multiplatform, and.NET MAUI, and some others is quite large. Let's dive into each one. To begin with, we should mention React Native, which was introduced by Facebook in 2015.
Of this toolkit you can create apps with JavaScript and React, a library that is commonly used to create web user interfaces. Microsoft office, Skype, and even Facebook itself are only some of the big names that have been using React Native. Next we have Flutter, a Google product that was released in 2017. Flutter is written in a programming language known as Dart and it borrows the best of JavaScript, Java, and C. eBay, Alibaba, and Google Pay are some of the examples of apps developed using Flutter. It is pretty strong and picking up a lot of momentum.
Next, we should speak about Kotlin Multiplatform. This is the latest entrants and is released by JetBrains, the maker of such tools as IntelliJ, PyCharm, and WebStorm, in my opinion, the finest IDEs on Earth. It is written in the modern programming language, Kotlin, a Java-inspired language. Such applications as McDonalds, Netflix, and Cash App are developed with Kotlin Multiplatform. Last but not least we have .NET MAUI, or, to give it its full name, .NET Multiplatform App UI, a Microsoft development. MAUI lets you develop native mobile and desktop applications in C# and .NET. Most companies in these days tend to employ multi platform development to minimize their expenses. We can therefore exclude the native development at this point and concentrate on cross-platform alternatives.
Coding-Beyond-Skills
The second thing you have to learn is a version control system such as Git. Git is not an actual program language; it is a utility that we can use to monitor the changes that we make to our code, as well as to coordinate with others. Every developer needs Git and GitHub that provides a platform to host Git repositories. Git has so many features now, however, you do not need to know them all. To make it easy, consider 80/20 rule; 80 percent of the time, 20 percent of the features of Git will do. Practice should take under one to two weeks to get started. Today, the development of mobile applications regularly implies the work with data structures and the implementation of sophisticated algorithms.
Herein lays the trap of many autodidact programmers as they attempt to jump forward and gain more and more languages and tools but do not learn the principles of computer science. Data structures and algorithms constitute essential topics in computer science courses, and are frequently discussed during the computer science interview process, particularly at large organizations such as Apple, Google, and Microsoft. Although you can pass over to the next step, as the person, who has had the honor to teach millions of people, I strongly advise you not to forget this step.
Otherwise you will experience the hurt in your career later. In that way, allocate 1 to 2 months to studying standard data structures and algorithms. This will provide you with the good base in program and problem solving. The second thing I would suggest studying, which once more is lacking in most self-taught developers, is design patterns. Design patterns are solutions to general software design issues. The book Design Patterns by the Gang of Four records 23 standard design patterns. Most of them are employed in mobile structures and acquiring them will provide a better idea of the principles of the object-oriented design and the nitty gritty of the work of those mobile structures.
