Working on a personal project could be a way to learn those other languages you referenced and possibly be worth review by a hiring company outside the Toronto area

@cdkMoose Sure. But working on a personal project with the intent to get that project reviewed by basically anyone is a foo's errand. As a learning tool to learn new technologies for OP's own personal benefit, sure.

@Ertai87 I am a developer from the U.S. who uses Flutter/Dart in a professional workplace. They are new (Flutter is < 5 years old), but there are U.S. jobs working with them. It's not true to say those languages functionally don't exist. Jobs working with them may be rare in Toronto, but that's a location issue.

@TarHalda Maybe you should find some way to reach out to OP (their Github url is in the OP edit history, maybe that's a start) and offer them a job? At the very least, introduce them to your network of Flutter/Dart developers so they can find out what that part of the industry looks like? :)

Maybe you just don't know a lot about cross-platform development (or even mobile development entirely). Flutter is probably the leader in the space.

@Džuris ...we could argue that over adult-beverage-of-choice but the main issue for the OP (and I think what this answer is gesturing towards) is that cross-platform mobile dev is a pretty small space compared to, well, just about everything else (e.g. native mobile dev in Swift/Java/Kotlin, backend development in whatever, web frontend, etc). If I had to bet my family's future on a tech stack... I wouldn't pick Dart/Flutter.

If you're in the mobile application development space, then you probably would have at least heard of Dart and Flutter. FYI, at least according to the StackOverflow 2022 developer survey, Dart ranked higher than Ruby, Swift, R, Lua, and Scala (among many others). But yes, currently it's definitely used far less than others and is relatively niche, although usage is growing.

Next to React Native, Flutter is probably the most popular cross-platform development platform out there. However, its novelty means that while it's a very popular hobbyist platform, its adoption in the professional space is still relatively low, which means it's mostly start-ups that are choosing to go with it. That means that most people hiring for it are usually looking for someone who can do general-purpose full-stack stuff as well. So while knowing Flutter certainly isn't a bad thing, knowing only Flutter might be.

Just because the interviewer didn’t ask you about your GitHub projects doesn’t mean they didn’t look at them and take them into account. Interviewers are very busy and interviews are often far too short for every line of questioning that may be desired. That said a public portfolio needs to be impressive or kept private. If it’s just basic example projects that you spent very little time on, use it to learn but don’t put it out there as a portfolio. A bad portfolio is worse than none at all.

So basically, do side projects primarily to learn as you have the time to spare without burning yourself out. If you have a really impressive side project (your code is clean, your feature set is rich, your UI is well designed, and you’ve gone well beyond an example project from a tutorial), add it to your portfolio. Otherwise don’t.

@jamesdlin The only reason I know Ruby is because I know a lot about Japan, and also one of my best friends is a Ruby developer, otherwise I would have never heard of it. The only reason I know Lua is because one of my favourite video games (Baba is You) is written in it. The only reason I know Scala is because I once did a (very small) project in it. R is a scripting language (and a bad one, at that), not a programming language. The only one of those mentioned that is not super niche is Swift (I'm not actually sure how niche Ruby is, it might just be that I'm exposed to it more)

Dart and Flutter are tools for mobile apps, not desktop computers. So, you're of course tautologically right to say that they "don't exist" in the world of desktop computer software, but they do exist and they are popular. Besides, the syntax of Dart is extremely similar to that of Java. It's a great skill for a young developer to have.

@Ertai87 If you think nobody outside of Japan has heard of Ruby and that "R is a [super niche] scripting language", you probably shouldn't be giving out advice on what constitutes a "real language"...

You might also want to refrain from making blatantly incorrect claims like "nobody cares about your personal projects". Whenever I evaluate a resume, links to personal projects absolutely are included in the score, especially if your for-pay experience is on the thin side. If I don't call attention to it in the interview, it's for the same reason I don't call attention to every single sentence of your work history. Too little time, and there may be more relevant questions to ask.

Ditto, @valderman's comments. When light on work experience, I look at personal projects as well when hiring. If someone' s got very little work experience, and hasn't been working on personal projects, they're not interested enough in the field for me to even consider them.

Flutter doesn't exist, for real? It's one of the most popular frameworks, what are you on about? Maybe you didn't hear about it but that doesn't mean it's worthless. Same with personal projects, no one cares about rubbish ones but a good one can help you land a job just fine. This is just bad advice all around, maybe you shouldn't advise people on things you don't know much about.

@TymoteuszPaul Please reach out to OP (his GitHub link is in the edit history of the OP) if you have a job for him! New developers can use the help! I took a look at his profile and he's also BIPOC if that means something to you.

@Gerrat So what you're saying is that if I don't code in my spare time you won't hire me? That practice is becoming increasingly frowned upon; it's better to be a more well-rounded person than simply sitting at home and writing code all the time. You're going to miss a lot of very skilled developers if you only look at people who code in their spare time as well as their employed time.

@Ertai87 I'm looking for passionate developers. If there's a skilled developer, who somehow got that way with no job experience, no current job, and isn't spending time coding - I'm not losing sleep on missing out on that unicorn.

@Gerrat I'd encourage you to rethink the repercussions of that position, but this is not the place to explain why.

+1 because of the useful insight you give talking about the actual state of the job market.

@Ertai87, this was an answer with incorrect information, and it risks being actively harmful. Dart/Flutter is one of the most in-demand skillsets right now - it's the second most performant mobile framework behind native code, it's cross-platform, it comes from Google, and it's #1 for new Ycombinator projects. Just because you haven't heard of something doesn't make it a "useless skill". I bet there are people who haven't heard of anything other than BAL and COBOL.