Vocab & Flashcards - my experience in mobile

Vocab & Flashcards is a mobile app for Android designed to help learn languages. It’s core purpose is to store the vocabulary one is learning. Users can insert vocabulary and hints, group the words and test their knowledge in a flashcards game mode.

I came up with the idea for the app while I was starting to learn Portuguese in December 2021. Every time I caught up new phrases and had them translated via Google Translate I was dissatisfied for not having a mobile app dedicated to the purpose of storing vocabulary. I have always wanted to test the waters in mobile development so I decided to develop an app for that purpose.

I chose Flutter to build the app in order to have only one code basis for both platforms iOS and Android. But I would soon find out that without an Apple computer no iOS-build can be done nor can I really maintain an iOS version of the app without any Apple phones - despite using a cross-platform framework. That was when I dropped the support for iOS and acknowledged that releasing at least an Android version for the Google Play Store was better than no app at all.

I have to admit that I do not like the overall experience. Even though I enjoyed writing Dart in Flutter I found the process of making sure the rendering of the app was similar throughout many different devices annoying. There’s also no real CI/CD in mobile development. Once a new version is deployed to the Google Play Console it’s up to Google to publish the release. Furthermore, monetizing - or just maintaining - a mobile app requires familiarity with certain laws in every country one wishes to publish a mobile app in. This can be overwhelming for a single person especially when the app is meant to be just a side project. That’s why I decided to decommission the app after more than two and a half years online. The decommissioning will take effect end of 2024.