[kolar]

It puzzles me also. Dart is solid language with great libraries, good tooling and still it is ignored by most developers. The truth is people from JS world seems to like 'cool' languages, but the one who want to be productive just uses boring Java/Dart etc.

[markdog12]

Happy Dart programmer here. Great, easy to learn, productive language that runs on browser, server, mobile. I have no idea why Dart isn't used more.

[kelvin0]

I want to give Dart a chance, because most of it's features seem quite appealing. I decided to start learning JS/Jquery and then move onto to Dart. The fact that everything comes bundled into Dart as a whole dev environment (IDE, compiling,packaging,) and the interoperability with JS make it quite attractive. What is your experience doing web dev with and without Dart (JS vs Dart, pros and cons)? I'd be really interested in your feedback!

[markdog12]

I started off with C/C++, Java, then AS3 writing Flash games. Then js/jquery and I instantly hated it (js). There were just too many quirks, bizarre, unexpected behavior. Sure, I could learn it inside out and avoid these pitfalls, but why would I when there were better alternatives?

I did use CoffeeScript after that, a beautiful little language, but only suitable for smallish projects. I need static typing for large projects.

After that, I learned Dart, and coming from C/C++, Java, AS3, it was a breeze. I find there are no quirks, everything behaves as you'd expect. Other team members were productive in Dart in about a week, without having seen a line of Dart code.

I mostly write HTML5 games and server-side with Dart, so I can't really talk too much about any client-side frameworks.

As for Dart cons, I guess one would be you have to use a different browser for web dev, but it's not really a big deal, I'm kinda reaching here. There aren't as many 3rd party libraries as some other languages. Depending on what you want, you might have to get your hands dirty and issue some pull requests for features/bug fixes for those libs. JS interop can still be a bit tricky too, depending on what you're doing.

Any specific questions, I'd be happy to answer. Also, there's a great slack channel for Dart: https://dartlang-slack.herokuapp.com/

[kelvin0]

Excellent, appreciate this thoughtful answer. So you mostly code games?

[markdog12]

Mostly, but not just front-end. Back-end game engines, REST APIs, db, session, horizontal scaling, basically the whole architecture.

[eggy]

Any tips on using Dart with mobile from Windows? I only need to target Android, not iOS.

I haven't touched Dart for over a year, but the Flutter page seems like it is on HTML, not native, and it only specifies Linux or OS X dev machine.

[markdog12]

Looks like Flutter dev for Windows isn't ready yet, but is planned. I believe Flutter is native, check out the system architecture:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1cw7A4HbvM_Abv320rVgP...

[eggy]

Yeah, I did finally, thanks!

I'm going to try it on my Linux box. The only disadvantage I can see for my eventual needs after a second reading is the lack of 3D support. I can get by with 2D for most of my stuff, but for games, I need the 3D hook.

I'll have to see how easy it is to customize the Dart-provided widgets. Might be easier than creating them from scratch in OpenGL via the NDK.

[markdog12]

< I need the 3D hook

What about using a combination of StageXL and ThreeJS? Then use Cordova to package your HTML5-based app?

http://www.stagexl.org/ http://threejs.org/ https://cordova.apache.org/