Introduction to Dart
last modified June 4, 2025
This is introduction to the Dart programming language. Dart first appeared in 2011; it is developed by Google. The website of the language is https://dart.dev/.
An online development environment is available at https://dartpad.dev/.
Dart Programming Language
Dart is a modern, client-optimized programming language designed for fast development of high-performance applications across multiple platforms, including mobile, desktop, server, and web. Developed by Google, Dart offers a clean and approachable syntax that is easy to learn for developers familiar with languages like JavaScript, Java, or C#.
Dart is particularly well-suited for building user interfaces, thanks to its efficient rendering engine and smooth integration with frameworks like Flutter. It enables hot reload, allowing developers to see changes instantly without restarting the app, significantly improving productivity.
Key features of Dart include:
- Object-oriented programming model with class-based inheritance.
- Garbage collection for efficient memory management.
- C-style syntax, making it familiar to developers from other languages.
- JIT (Just-in-Time) compilation for fast development cycles.
- AOT (Ahead-of-Time) compilation for high-performance native execution.
- Can compile to machine code (native) or JavaScript for browser-based applications.
Dart powers Flutter, Google's UI toolkit for building natively compiled applications for mobile, web, and desktop from a single codebase. Flutter's reactive framework takes advantage of Dart's fast execution and rich feature set to provide beautiful, responsive user interfaces.
Dart continues to evolve, offering developers an efficient way to create modern, cross-platform applications with minimal overhead.
Dart installation
Dart is very easy to install.
$ sudo apt-get install dart
On Debian-based Linux distributions, we can install Dart with the above command.
$ dart --version Dart SDK version: 2.10.4 (stable) (Unknown timestamp) on "linux_x64"
After successfull installation, we can check the installed version of Dart with
the --version command.
Dart has a good extension for VS Code called Dart; it contains language support and debugger for Visual Studio Code.
Dart simple example
The following is a simple example in Dart.
void main() {
print('First program in Dart');
}
The program prints a message to the console. Dart programs have the
main.dart extension. The main function is the entry point
to the program. The function name is preceded with the void keyword
indicating that the function does not return anything.
The body of the function is enclosed in a pair of curly brackets.
The print function displays a message in console. The statements
are terminated with a semicolon.
$ dart main.dart First program in Dart
Dart variables
Variables store references to values.
void main() {
String name = 'John Doe';
int age = 34;
print('$name is $age years old');
}
In the example, we have a string and a integer variable. The names of the
variables are preceded with String and int data types.
String name = 'John Doe';
We can create string literals both with single and double quotes.
print('$name is $age years old');
Dart supports variable interpolation in strings. The variables preceded with
the $ character are evaluated to their values inside strings.
$ dart main.dart John Doe is 34 years old
Dart user input
The dart:io library provides file, socket, HTTP, and other I/O
support for non-web applications.
import 'dart:io';
void main() {
stdout.write("Enter your name: ");
var name = stdin.readLineSync();
print('Hello $name\n');
}
The example prompts the user for his name and prints a message.
stdout.write("Enter your name: ");
We can use the stdout.write function to write to the console
without a newline character.
var name = stdin.readLineSync();
We read the user input with stdin.readLineSync.
$ dart main.dart Enter your name: Peter Hello Peter
Source
This was an introduction to the Dart programming language.
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