Programming Tutorials

What is Google Dart?

By: Emiley J in Trends Tutorials on 2011-12-27  

Google Dart is a new web programming scripting language launched by Google. Why is there a need for another web programming language? Well, Google's answer to this one is that JavaScript is suited for smaller web applications. When the application gets bigger and more complex, then Javascript may not be the best suited language. So for more complex web applications google dart is the better choice.

Google has tried to make the syntax of Dart very similar to Javascript. Anyone who is familiar with Java or C# should be very comfortable with Dart and can start programming in Dart in a day. Another important feature of Dart is its ability to run either on the client or on the server. This is in contrast to javascript which can only run on the client. Since dart can run on either client or server, based on the target platform, the developer can choose where the code should run. If for example, the application is targeted for desktops then the code can run on the client. But if the target platform is a mobile then the developer can choose to run the code on the server to make it faster and improve performance.

Another thing to note is to improve startup time of the application, dart uses a DVM (Dart Virtual Machine) developed for the language which will run the dart code scripts. Dart code can be compiled to JavaScript which makes it possible to run on any available browsers. So with the Dart code, you can run it on DVM or compilt it to Javascript to run it on any browsers without the DVM.

Dart may or may not replace JavaScript. Web programmers will continue to use JavaScript for ease of use. However, for larger applications, it maybe a good idea to develop using Dart. So both JavaScript and dart will co-exist in the near future. Only time will tell if dart is capable of totally replacing Javascript.