u/Acceptable_Field8281

The evolution of Application Development using AI

The path ahead is clear: Generative AI continues to decrease the amount of time between the beginning of an idea to actually selling it as a product. Multimodal models will take a creative brief and produce software (design, code, test and deploy) from that one source. Agentic intelligent systems will monitor currently in use software applications in real-time, detect and resolve problems without human intervention. Developers will no longer write code as their primary duty but instead, will be more of a commander directing multiple intelligent systems in completing their assigned tasks; which will be a completely different and more powerful role than just creating code.

Business that create AI literate teams today will create the benchmark(s) for success tomorrow. The question facing organizations is not, should we implement AI-assisted Development but, when do we build the organizational capability to do AI-assisted Development and who is the best partner to assist in that transition?

Conclusion

Generative AI is not superseding mobile application developers' jobs; instead, it is enabling them to accomplish a higher level of performance. AI will help reduce timeframes, improve quality (of finished product) and provide more opportunities for innovative product development than was previously possible for many organizations. If organizations take action now in selecting the right partner and have the right strategy, they can place themselves on the fast-track to producing the type of digital solutions that will define the next ten (10) years.

I recently completed a multi-country Flutter project and wanted to share some real lessons learned:

Some of the biggest challenges we faced were:

1. Supporting vertical (Arabic) and horizontal (English) languages from one code base
2. Using 7 different payment gateways, one per country
3. Allowing for custom menus, pricing and promotion to each individual country
4. Supporting 7 different listings in the App Store and Play Store

How did we solve these problems?

• Using Flutter Flavors to create one flavor for each country
• Using a shared design system, with locales, overrides
• Using feature flags for each country
• Using a single CI/CD pipeline for all countries using Fastlane and GitHub Actions.