Today we compare two of the most competitive programming languages in cross-platform mobile application development: Dart Vs JavaScript.
Javascript and Dart are both good choices for cross-platform mobile application development, as can be seen from React Native and Flutter. Dart is pretty new compared to JavaScript, but it has some really nice features and great support from Google.
Right now, it’s hard to pick the best of the two, but Dart has a good trend.
- Dart
- Javascript
- Dart Vs JavaScript
- Advantages and disadvantages
- conclusion
Dart
Dart was born in 2011, but wasn’t very popular until 2017. Dart was originally used internally at Google to build web and mobile applications. The compiled source code for Dart is similar to JavaScript, but the standalone Dart SDK comes with a Dart virtual machine and it has its own package manager called Pub.
Dart’s popularity has been on the rise since 2017, when Google announced a beta version of Flutter, a cross-platform mobile app development. Dart can be easily learned by developers with OOP development experience.
Dart is a fairly new language for non-Google developers. Despite all the effort Google has put into writing the Dart programming language, developers have struggled to find solutions to specific problems. It has a Java-like syntax in terms of coding style and syntax, so developers with an OOP background can easily learn and use Dart once they’ve mastered the basics.
Dart code is written using both pre-compiled (AOT) and real-time compiled (JIT). This means that Dart compiles and executes code in the background as you write it, and you get results in real time, no longer waiting for compilation!
As a reliable alternative to JavaScript, Dart has almost all the flexibility and ease of use that JavaScript provides. Dart won the highest number of votes for the most popular language in last year’s JAXenter poll. Dart has a lot of cool features that make it an absolutely popular, programmer-friendly language.
Key features of the Dart
- Fully object-oriented: Just like JavaScript, this relies on objects, and if you like OOP concepts, you’ll like to use Dart for development. It also supports interfaces, mixins, abstract classes, static typing, and more.
- Easy to learn: Dart has an easy-to-understand syntax that reminds you of C and JavaScript. You only need to learn a few of its concepts to build your first project on Dart because it has a shorter learning curve.
- Portability: Dart works easily on any operating system, and there are no specific hardware configuration requirements to run it. A pure Dart application can run on most major mobile operating systems, and Dart-written Web applications can run in any browser.
- Great productivity: A good programming language can accomplish a lot of difficult tasks in a short amount of time, which is what makes Dart superior to most other languages. Everything from syntax to behind-the-scenes work scenarios is perfect for increasing developer productivity. In addition, if you run into a problem that the language itself cannot handle, there are a number of libraries and packages available on its official platform.
- Written once for multiple platforms: Dart can independently manage many platforms, such as mobile applications, web applications, desktop applications, scripting tasks, and server/client work. Of course, it can be written once and easily executed on different platforms.
Tools for integration with Dart
- Flutter is a cross-platform mobile user interface framework developed by Google.
- Aqueduct Multi-threaded server side framework.
- Dartwebdev a web application that uses Google’s service integration.
- Angular Dart is a web-based alternative to Dart.
Javascript
JavaScript instantly became the most popular language when Facebook introduced the React & The React Native framework for Web and mobile application development. Javascript is dynamic in nature, doesn’t need to compile code on the client side, and it has its own package manager, NPM.
Javascript supports OOP and functional programming, which is popular with both professional and casual developers.
Javascript has been around for a long time and is a mature and stable language. Very easy to use, and with many existing frameworks and libraries, developers can use existing code to develop applications faster.
Developers need to share and distribute code, so there are thousands of JS packages available. Very friendly to new developers.
One caveat: Not all of the JS libraries and frameworks out there are good ones. In addition, JS libraries tend to release new versions every once in a while, so developers need to constantly learn new frameworks, which hampers their productivity.
If you think JavaScript is only for games, desktop, mobile, and web application development, you’re wrong. It can range from the Internet of things to machine learning to robotics. You can use TensorFlowJS to train the machine model in the browser, and the CylonJS framework to change the lighting color of Philips Hue.
Key features of Javascript
- Browser support: All browsers accept JavaScript as a scripting language file and provide integration support.
- Functional programming languages: In Javascript, functions can be assigned to variables just like any other data type. Not only that, a function can take another function as an argument, return a function, and define anonymous functions.
- Can be used on both the client and server side: JavaScript has access to the browser’s document Object model (DOM), and because of this, JavaScript can be used to add different effects to web pages. In addition, Javascript can be used to do server-side rendering.
- Object-oriented programming: Javascript is an object-oriented language, and Javascript handles objects and inheritance a little differently than traditional object-oriented programming languages, such as Java. Because of this, Javascript supports most object-oriented concepts and is easy to learn and use.
Tools that integrate with JavaScript
- Auth0 is a token-based registration tool
- Yarn a package manager and a good alternative to NPM
- Gatsby JS is a website framework built with React
- Eslint a popular JavaScript code checker
- Azure Cosmos DB Microsoft’s global distributed database service
- Algolia is an API for building search results
- Lodash is a functional programming tool library
- Circleci is a popular continuous integration and delivery platform
The Dart contrast JavaScript
| category | Dart | JavaScript |
|---|---|---|
| Ease of use | It has a Java-like syntax in terms of coding style and syntax, and developers with an OOP background can easily use Dart | Javascript is a mature, easy-to-use, stable language with a large number of frameworks and online libraries |
| productivity | There is a relatively small community based on Dart and Flutter. Despite the good documentation provided, Dart still confuses many experienced developers | It’s easier for new developers to program in JavaScript because JavaScript is a faster, lightweight, and dynamic programming language. It offers numerous JS frameworks and thousands of NPM packages that can improve developer productivity |
| The learning curve | Learning Dart can be daunting for beginners because it is not a commonly used programming language, and online courses and books for Dart programming are very limited | Learning JavaScript is not an easy task for non-programmers, but understanding basic programming concepts can make JavaScript easier to learn. For developers who want to learn JavaScript, there are many online courses and tutorials to choose from |
| Popularity | Flutter is growing in popularity as an alternative to React Native as big companies like Alibaba and Google start to adopt it. Still, it has a long way to go to match the popularity of JavaScript. | JavaScript is so popular and ubiquitous that there is no device in the world that doesn’t run JavaScript |
| Front end Vs back end | Dart is primarily used to develop front ends for cross-platform mobile applications | Javascript can be used on both the front end and the server side |
| Type safety | Dart is more type-safe than JavaScript because it supports both weak and strong typing | Javascript is not a type-safe language because it supports both dynamic typing and Duck typing. Programming errors are found only at run time |
| IDE support | Dart code can be developed using lightweight editors such as Sublime or VIM, and IntelliJ IDEA and AndroidStudio come with the Dart plugin, which is the most commonly used IDE for Dart application development. Especially in the development of Flutter applications | JavaScript doesn’t always need a full-blown IDE, as developers can use a variety of editors such as VIM, Sublime Text, Emacs, Atom, WebStorm, VSCode. |
| Commercial use | Dart, developed by Google, is also used by big brands like Blossom, WorkTrails, Whale, Mobile, and more | Javascript is widely used by big companies like Instagram, Reddit, ebay, Slack, and Airbnb to develop web and cross-platform mobile applications |
| Development scenarios | Dart can be used for both Web and mobile application development | JavaScript through a variety of frameworks to develop the corresponding mobile applications, Web applications |
| speed | Dart is much faster than JavaScript because it can compile BOTH AOT and JIT at the same time, which helps build applications in a variety of ways because JIT compilation speeds up development and AOT compilation can be used for better optimization during release. This technology has already been used in Flutter. | JavaScript is an interpreted language that needs to be interpreted and executed at runtime, which is slower than Dart |
Advantages and disadvantages comparison
JavaScript advantages
- Support front-end and back-end development
- cross-platform
- Lots of useful popular frameworks
- It is fast, light and flexible
The Dart advantages
- It’s more trustworthy because it’s backed by Google
- It runs twice as fast as JavaScript
- It can be extended across different projects
- It is widely used in Flutter mobile development
- Dart is type safe and compiled using AOT and JIT compilers
- Open source
The Dart shortcomings
- Compared to JavaScript, the ecosystem is not perfect
- Dart resources are limited and it is difficult to find a solution
- Dart is a new language for programmers, with less use on the market
JavaScript shortcomings
- Not providing good client-side security. If a malicious website loads onto your browser, the code will run and potentially damage the device. In this case, the only solution is to disable JavaScript
- An error could cause the entire site to stop loading
- Multithreading is not supported
- Frameworks are updated frequently
conclusion
From this comparison, we can conclude that JavaScript is the undisputed king of Web and server development, and Dart is slowly developing. It is better at mobile cross-platform applications, and it has almost all the flexibility and ease of use of JavaScript, with great potential for development. Therefore, it is a win-win choice for the developer community to choose which of the two languages is more suitable for us, depending on the specific project and expertise.
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