Why Dart?

Introduction

I have been a Microsoft .NET developer since .NET came out as Beta back in late 2000 and Visual Basic developer before that. Over the past fifteen years I came across many languages and technologies that pose challenge to .NET and its development framework. They were good but usually they were good in one particular aspect and again at some level you have to fall back to IIS or .NET framework for other features. I am not claiming that over the past fifteen years there was no language or technology that did all what .NET does. They might have done all but they were not as good as .NET or in some cases the development environment was not as easy to use as Visual Studio.

And then came Google's Dart

 As I mentioned in my intro that .NET provided a complete solution for most of the programming projects. That meant that in some cases we as developers had to work through some of the challenges that .NET framework posed. I always looked for a language that would be close enough to C# and at the same time development would be easy in it should provide a complete solution and not just one aspect. 

Elephant in the room

Let us talk about the elephant in the room first. By the elephant in the room, I mean the following:

1. Dart is not even supported by Chrome

At the time of writing this article, the Google's chrome does not support dart in its default setting. But there is a version of Google Chrome called Chromium that does come with Dart support. You can visit https://www.dartlang.org/docs/dart-up-and-running/contents/ch04-tools-dartium.html for further details.

2. Why not just use java script?

Google has been improving java script for a long time. Java script has come a long way. The fastest java script engine that I am aware of is called V8. Having said that Java script has some language features that put Java script in some disadvantage. If not disadvantage then at least cause the slowness. Google's dart language has language features that allow it be faster than javascript. Just that alone is an advantage that makes a whole lot of sense when thinking about scalable mobile applications. Also, let us say you use dartToJs to convert dart code to Java script. That too is faster than traditional java script. 

Screen shot from : https://www.dartlang.org/performance/

3. What about the Google's Go programming language?

This one is a tough one. Per my knowledge Google's Go language or golang was developed to make programmers more productive. So it means it is not a language comparable to C# or VB but a language to fix a part of problem. I do not think that if I should invest time and energy in learning golang. If you compare that with Dart then dart appears to be more general purpose and more evolved than golang.

 4. What about jQuery?

If you take the evolution of a language as a factor then jQuery seems to be quite evolved. Google Dart seems to have been "inspired" by many features of jQuery if you go through some development using Dart. With all the good stuff that jQuery does,  underneath that it is essentially java script. So the same disadvantages Also, if jQuery would have been filling all the gaps that java script has then I do not think Google dart would have been developed.

So since I have explained the negative things that are said about Google's Dart language, I can now talk about the good stuff.

Amazing Dart Features

Now let us talk about the aspects that makes language of choice for modern web apps.

Scalable Web app development:

When the dart was being developed, it appears that only the 'good parts' of other languages like 'C#' and 'Java script' were taken into consideration. At the same time the 'bad parts' of the other languages were avoided. What resulted is a language that is highly tuned for scalable web application development. Here is one example:

import 'dart:math' as math;

import 'dart:convert' show JSON;

The above two examples show a feature that is quite amazing. What it does is that it enables a program to include a particular library but not all of what is present in a library. It allows select part of library that your program would be concerned with. Imagine the situation where System.Web in .NET. The system.web is a huge a library about 8 megs. In ASP.NET we use system.web a lot but we do not need all the features of system.web. What ends up happening is that the application becomes bloated. 

So language features as one mentioned above allow us developers to create scalable web applications using Google's dart language.

Mobile development:

Like or not more and more applications are being developed for mobile. Which means that more and more of the logic is being sent on the browser end and less of  running the logic at the server side. This is pushing the envelop on web development. You do not have much memory at the same time you cannot rely on chatty architecture as mobile environment is not always available with internet (that is why SPA "Single page application" gained popularity). So what it means that you want to provide rich experience to users but not rely on heavy web controls. Dart fills this gap very well. It is robust like jQuery for provided rich experience at the same time it is fully refined language as C#.

Language feels like C#:

Why this is an amazing language feature? That is because most of the .NET developers including me love C#. So when you see a language similar to C# then you feel at home and learning curve does not seems intimidating. Let us say if the dart's syntax was very different from C# then for me personally it would have been a major turn off or I had to prepare myself for steep learning curve. Now let us see some of the examples where dart language feels like C#.

Server side programming:

This is huge. We have been living in a web echo system where UI logic was written in different language then middle tier logic or the back-end logic. Example, a web site that has front end developed using jQuery or Java script, talking to a web service that is written using C#. That certainly meant that you have to have expertise in both languages in order to produce an excellent result. Which often meant two different types of developers.With dart you can have a developer who is expert for both back-end and front-end developer. There is an interesting analogy that helps explain this. In the world of military aviation, those air force who have more variety of aircraft are considered less efficient than those who have less variety. This is because for more variety you have to have more skill personal in different technology who translates into more expensive maintenance.

In my next few blogs I will share my experience and knowledge with regards to dart.