Use Dart Data Class Generator

I personally don’t like code generators, but they do save a lot of time writing boilerplate code. However, you can mitigate some of that by using the Dart Data Class Generator extension for VSCode. This lets you create copyWith, toJson, fromJson, and many other helpful methods.

Is it bad to use a lot of packages in my apps?

Not necessarily. Using packages, means you are relying on someone else for your app to work. Many of these packages are very trustworthy, and should definitely be utilized.

My advice is to start with using as many packages as needed to get a working application that can go out to users, and then slowly remove the less trustworthy ones, and implement your own code.