It feels as if there are almost as many pro­gram­ming languages as there are grains of sand on the beach. Among the numerous options out there, the pro­gram­ming language Dart is the new kid on the block. When comparing internet pro­gram­ming languages, the basic pro­gram­ming paradigms are usually fairly similar. It is only when you take a deeper dive into them and examine them in detail that the dif­fer­ences become apparent.

Recently developed pro­gram­ming languages are often dedicated to creating mobile ap­plic­a­tions for smart­phones and tablets. These languages need to enable a good user ex­per­i­ence (UX) with minimal syntax and also use as little of the device’s available memory as possible. In the following, we will explain how Google’s pro­gram­ming language Dart fits into this category and what it can do.

What is Dart?

Dart is a pro­gram­ming language that was and still is primarily developed by Google. Dart is ECMA stand­ard­ised (European Computer Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­ation). Dart is intended to be an at­tract­ive al­tern­at­ive to JavaS­cript for pro­gram­ming in modern web browsers. Dart de­velopers believe that it is no longer possible to solve the issues with JavaS­cript by con­tinu­ing to develop the language.

The pro­gram­ming language Dart was developed in 2010 and first released the following year. Browsers did not and still do not natively support Dart, so the Dart2js compiler (‘Dart to JavaS­cript’) was developed since JavaS­cript can be executed in all modern browsers. Dart is similar to common object-oriented pro­gram­ming languages (e.g. Swift, C# and Java) which are based on specific pro­gram­ming paradigms. Its rules for combining specific char­ac­ters (i.e. the syntax) are similar to those in the pro­gram­ming language C. This sim­il­ar­ity makes the language quite easy to learn, so you can get started using it without having to overcome any huge language barriers.

How is Dart struc­tured?

Dart is comprised of variables, operators, con­di­tion­al state­ments, loops, functions, classes, objects, and enu­mer­a­tions. It features in­her­it­ance and generic pro­gram­ming which are important concepts of an object-oriented pro­gram­ming language – much of which will be familiar to an ex­per­i­enced pro­gram­mer. If you are looking to try out this language for the first time, there is an open source platform called DartPad available which you can use to get a feel for the language and check out some examples from a drop-down menu.

All programs written in Dart start by calling the “ ‘main’ function:

void main() {
}

The following example demon­strates how to define a variable and execute a con­di­tion­al statement:

void main() {
    var animal = 'horse';
    if (animal == 'cat' || animal == 'dog') {
        print('This animal is a pet.');
        } else if (animal == 'elephant') {
        print('That\’s a huge animal.');    
     } else {
        print('This animal is not a pet.');
     }
}

In DartPad, this results in the following output in the console:

Image: An overview of the programming language Dart
A simple example demon­strat­ing pro­gram­ming in Dart

For the variable ‘animal’ (var animal), replace ‘horse’ with ‘cat’, ‘dog’, or ‘elephant’ and watch how the output changes in the console on the right-hand side. For more detailed in­form­a­tion on how to program with Dart, check out our Dart tutorial.

What is Dart used for?

Dart is primarily used to program for internet-enabled devices (e.g. smart­phones, tablets, and laptops) and for servers. Until recently, it has not been realistic for pro­gram­ming beginners to try to develop mobile or web-based ap­plic­a­tions them­selves. Dart’s approach aims to make pro­gram­ming such apps easier. Google’s own software de­vel­op­ment kit (SDK) Flutter and the well-known ad­vert­ising tool Google Ads are both pro­grammed with Dart. Ad­di­tion­al examples include the websites for the New York Times and Groupon. DartPad, mentioned above, provides a con­veni­ent way to get to know the language using the trial-and-error method and acquire basic pro­gram­ming skills with it.

What are Dart’s strengths and weak­nesses?

Dart has a number of ad­vant­ages but also some dis­ad­vant­ages.

Ad­vant­ages

Dart is an open source pro­gram­ming language and can be used by anyone free of charge. Dart is developed by Google. Being backed by such a large company means that this language has long-term prospects for further de­vel­op­ment. Dart is easy to learn for pro­gram­mers because of its syntax. Its de­velopers have sim­pli­fied and in­tel­li­gently condensed many of the com­plic­ated syn­tactic­al concepts found in other languages. Anyone who has already worked with C# will be able to quickly fa­mil­i­ar­ise them­selves with Dart. This pro­gram­ming language has been developed for the web. Due to being able to be quickly and directly converted into JavaS­cript, Dart can work in all modern mobile and desktop browsers. To program with this language, all you need is a simple text editor. However, this will require a deeper knowledge of the pro­gram­ming language. It is easier to work in special editors like Android Studio (Google) and Visual Studio Code (Microsoft).

Dis­ad­vant­ages

Dart is a re­l­at­ively new pro­gram­ming language. This means that its support community is not very large yet and it doesn’t have as many learning resources available as JavaS­cript. However, it is safe to assume that this will soon change. The initial in­stall­a­tion of an editor and its technical resources on a computer is well doc­u­mented but is also fraught with pitfalls. Critics have also pointed out that once again a new language has been in­tro­duced to the market instead of trying to perfect the existing ones.

How is Dart different from other pro­gram­ming languages?

One major way that Google’s pro­gram­ming language Dart stands out from other pro­gram­ming languages is by being easier to read with a syntax that is similar to that of a human language. It uses fewer commands but more options. You can freely choose the names for your variables making any code you write yourself un­der­stand­able. This also elim­in­ates the need to make tons of ad­di­tion­al comments in the code. You can use spaces, tabs, and line breaks as you wish. This allows a pro­gram­mer to clearly structure the code in a way that will ul­ti­mately be ignored by the compiler. There are ex­cep­tions such as keywords, variable names, and function names (i.e. defined terms in Dart). These include ‘if’, ‘else’, ‘string’, and ‘void’ among others. Lastly, a clear dis­tinc­tion is made between using uppercase and lowercase letters which sig­ni­fic­antly increases the scope for naming.

In an analysis of the most popular pro­gram­ming languages in 2019, the developer platform Stack Overflow found that Dart (66.3%) was just behind JavaS­cript (66.8%).

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