How a Nightly Routine Inspired Me to Build My First App

The Small Problem That Provided Motivation

Every night, I'd call my girlfriend, and I'd always forget half the things I wanted to talk about. At this point, I was already a bit interested in coding an app, so I decided it would be pretty cool to use this as motivation to learn how to build my very own app, which I could use to quickly jot down stuff I wanted to tell my girlfriend about.

Starting Out

I had some basic programming knowledge from back in school -like just the basic "hello world" kind of stuff-but nothing that felt useful. So, I started researching how to make an app and learnt about Flutter which seemed easy to use for building mobile apps, so I decided to give it a shot.

Setting up Flutter and an Android emulator was actually kind of hard, and when I stared at the default project, I already felt like giving up.

Could AI Save Me

This is when I turned to ChatGPT. I'd describe what I wanted, and it would spit out some code. At first, I thought this was really cool and that I'd be done making my app in no time. But then I realized I had no clue how the code actually worked, and mashing multiple code blocks together just broke everything.
After an entire night of experimenting(a.k.a copy-pasting code), I did manage to build an app with infinite cards that you could scroll through, but I understood nothing. It was frustrating, so I just gave up on trying to code.

Maybe FlutterFlow Is My True Saviour ( And It Half Is )

I decided to look for no-code app development solutions and I found FlutterFlow. This is when Flutter code actually decided to make sense to me -like everything was mostly just rows, columns and containers, how simple is that. I just discovered the structure to flutter apps and it finally gave me the courage to get back into coding again.

I would have actually continued using FlutterFlow if I could build and install the code on my phone, but that feature was understandably locked behind a paywall.

Finally, Actually Building My First App

I started by following a YouTube tutorial by Mitch Koko to build a simple notes app. He's made a bunch of follow-along tutorials that helped me get a hang of the architecture and the structure of the app. Doing this I also learnt about:

• CRUD operations: how to create, read, update, and delete data in an app.
• Databases: how to store information locally.

Along the way, I encountered some confusion when the UI wouldn't update after a change in the database.That's when I had come across state management and packages like Riverpod.

Next up

After I finished my notes app, I built an expense tracker twice and currently (as of Jan 10, 2025) I'm making an AI-powered patient history assistant (Sage) that I could use to help with my clinical postings.

Web Dev

Now, I wanted to build websites too. So, while researching web dev, I came across The Odin Project, which is a free web development curriculum. It introduced me to:

• HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Ruby.
• Building web apps with Ruby on Rails.

I haven't finished it yet, but I think I've learned enough to feel comfortable building simple websites.

Looking back

I'm really excited with how far I've come and where this could lead me in the future.

I'm still learning, but I feel like I've found something I truly enjoy. If you're thinking about coding, my advice: start with something you care about. You'll be surprised where it takes you.