Flutter Heroes 2023: Chili impressions
In Chili, we discovered the benefits of using Flutter for our daily work in 2019 and fully embraced it by 2020. But as you may remember, 2020 was the year of social isolation because of the Covid pandemic, which meant no in-person Flutter (or any, for that matter) conferences for our team. This is why 2023 got us excited - offline conferences are back, and we can finally enjoy those experiences as a team! We started with Flutter Heroes 2023 in Turin. Let’s relive the amazing experience that our team had ??
What we learned
The conference agenda is what makes it successful - and Flutter Heroes was one for sure! Here is an overview of the amazing talks that we have attended.
The ultimate cookbook of Flutter testing by Teresa Wu
Teresa delivered an insightful talk based on her experience of how to plan and implement your project in a way that helps avoid bugs and consistently solves business problems by prioritizing testing and collaboration. She introduced us to the notion of behavior-driven development and walked us through all layers of automated testing.
Flutter and AR in the wild by Kendi J
It is always fascinating to see how advanced technology can be used to solve everyday problems. Kendi J shared with us some of the real-world use cases of AR and demonstrated how to implement it in Flutter!
Power Up your Flutter Apps with Voice by Akanksha Singh
Voice assistants are incredibly valuable tools for making your apps accessible to a much wider audience. As an older sister, I can tell you that my younger brothers learned to say "Hey, Google" before they even learned the alphabet ?. Akanksha showed us various applications of voice assistants and the options we have for integrating them into our Flutter apps.
How to hack & protect Flutter Apps by Tomáš Soukal
App security is an important topic for any app developer – there is no doubt about that. In order to protect your app, you should first understand how it can be hacked! Both of these topics were covered by Tomáš in his fantastic talk, and I’m sure that in the near future, it will be much harder to hack the apps of the attendees. ?
Introduction to Building Games with Flame by Lukas Klingsbo
Did you know that you don't have to be a gamer to build games? That's a fun fact we learned about Lukas. ? We also discovered some game development concepts and that your app doesn't have to be a game exclusively. You can incorporate gamification elements into your existing apps with the help of Flame! This talk inspired us to try something of our own, so stay tuned!
Accelerate UI development and simplify collaboration among designers and developers with Widgetbook by Roaa Khaddam
A great designer and a great developer make for a perfect combination to create a mind-blowing app. However, communication is key, as they must work together without driving each other crazy ?. Widgetbook is an amazing tool that facilitates this much-needed collaboration. In her talk, Roaa demonstrated how to use it to improve the development process and increase productivity.
From 10 years native to the biggest Flutter app in Europe: the story of SNCF Connect by Adrien Body, Francois Nollen & Valentin Michalak
Successful use cases of big applications are crucial for the widespread adoption of a framework. The case study of the biggest Flutter app in Europe – SNCF is a great example. The developers shared technical decisions, how they were made, what problems arose along the way, and how they were solved. It was a very insightful talk and an amazing example if you need to explain why and how Flutter is used not only for small applications.
Let’s shake the Flutter tree by Aleksandr Denisov
Want to learn how to explain complex concepts in an easy-to-understand and engaging way? Watch Aleksandr's performance and see for yourself! In his talk, he explains how tree-shaking works, an important process that is often overlooked. He also covers situations where it doesn't work. Personally, this was my favorite talk of the day because I'm always fascinated by understanding how "magical" concepts work under the hood.
And here are what my teammates have to say:
Igors Kersovs:
My favorite talks were about mobile security and state management with BLoC. Mobile security is a very important topic and part of the development process that is often neglected. There are certain security standards that every mobile developer should know or be aware of.
Also, security is one of my favorite topics as well, since I was working on multiple projects that had security as the main part of the development.
Previously I was also disassembling apps to check application security.
The talks themselves discussed:
- OWASP MAS practices
- So that everyone is aware of current top vulnerabilities and knows how to prevent or fix them.
- App disassembly
- How it’s done, what tools are available for this, and the importance of not storing sensitive information in easily accessible places.
- Defense of the API calls.
- Using the best practices, validating inbound and outbound data.
- How to protect against attacks.
- Identifying and blocking attacks in real-time with RASP (Runtime Application Self-Protection) and its Flutter library freeRASP.
- Using code obfuscation.
Flutter freeRASP package:
During both security talks, freeRASP was talked about as the best tool for improving security on top of following security best practices during mobile development.
Before arriving in Turin, the talk that I was most looking forward to was Akanksha Singh’s Power Up your Flutter Apps with Voice, because of personal investment in my daily work - investigation of expanding development with Accessibility technologies. Implementation of Voice UI in an app is such a great idea and in combination with Artificial Intelligence (AI) it not only improves the accessibility for people with disabilities but also expands the possibilities of how can we interact with apps altogether. Possibilities are endless, really excited about what will it look like in the next few years.
Seeing the celebrity of Flutter Community, the Queen of animations Roaa Khaddam perform in person and meeting her was definitely a bucket list item for me. It was everything that I was expecting and more. Her talk about Accelerating UI Development and Simplify Collaboration Among Designers and Developers with Widgetbook was on point. Bridging the gap between the developers and designers is something that I’ve been looking forward to for a while, to improve the app development, feedback cycle, and overall quality.
Game development wasn’t even on my radar. But thanks to Lukas Klingsbo I’m totally hooked and already plotting how I’m going to build a game w/ the Flame engine. So thanks to Lukas for that!
Amazing delivery by Aleksandr Denisov about the Tree-shaking mechanism in Flutter was the perfect ending for the whole track. The delivery was engaging and simple and very informative. I already had a conceptual understanding of what Dart tree shaking was, but after the talk, it was clear what actually happens behind the scenes when it’s “performed”.
Valerijs Baufals:
One of my favorite talks was about hacking and protecting Flutter apps. Tomáš demonstrated and explained, in an easy-to-understand way, how we could do this. Another talk that I enjoyed was about Flutter tree-shaking. The topic was very informative and interesting, and the speaker's performance was awesome, spiced with humor, and engaging the audience.
What we experienced
For some of us, this was a first-time conference experience ever! And you know it was a great one if you’re left wanting more :)
The best thing about in-person events is the people that make them happen. It was amazing to meet old friends and make new ones! Thanks to everyone who made this experience memorable!
It was also an excellent opportunity for team building. The Chili team had a great time experiencing Turin and Milan, including the beautiful culture, history, architecture, art, and of course, Italian cuisine :)
And that’s a wrap! There are many amazing Flutter events coming (including our very own Mobile Developer Latvia meet-ups!) and we’re looking forward to participating in them!
— Daria ?
Let’s build products together!
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