Introduction
How is it that one is able to learn a technology in such a short time? I'll tell you my experience.
The weekend of October 22nd and 23rd I participated in the ROBOHackIT 2022 hackathon. This hackathon is organised by James W. Robinson Secondary School and aimed towards High School Students all around the world. The challenge was to build any software application that helped in digital education.
Three fourths of my team was familiar with Flutter and the Dart language, which is why we decided to build an app using those technologies. I was the only one who didn't know Flutter. This presented a challenge since I am very experienced in web development and all related technologies, but now had to take all that knowledge and translate it into mobile applications.
The Problem ⚠️
The day arrived and I felt a little confident on my skills. I sit down, open my computer, and we create the repository. Then I stopped completely. I realised I knew nothing about this unknown world of mobile apps. I genuinelly felt like I wasn't going to make it.
Slowly but steadily I started reading and trying things until the worked. I started to see progress in the app and things started to make sense. The hardest thing was not to learn the syntax but to change the mindset from web development to app development.
Getting Fully Immersed
About 10 hours into the hackathon I felt like I could code fluently in Flutter and figure out the causes to my errors. I was amazed at the proficiency I had gained in a very short amount of time. The whole night I continued to read, research, and put things into practice.
The amount of things I learned in a very short amount of time were insane. Learning a completely different technology from what I am used to and had been using for the last 3 years.
Conclusion 🌱
In less than 24 hours I was able to become proficient in Flutter and Dart, obviously with still much to learn. The conclusion of this experience was that immersing yourself in a technology can really help you learn it in a very short amount of time.
The intention of this article is to let all of you know how you can do amazing things and learn whole technologies and languages by placing yourself in the right situation. I wish you the best of luck!