Overview

Dart

Stacks4.0K

Followers3.8K

Votes452

Crystal

Stacks339

Followers350

Votes286

GitHub Stars20.0K

Forks1.7K

Crystal vs Dart: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this comparison, we will look at the key differences between Crystal and Dart programming languages.

Syntax: Crystal has a syntax similar to Ruby, making it easy for Ruby developers to transition into Crystal. On the other hand, Dart has a syntax similar to Java or JavaScript, making it more familiar to developers with a background in these languages.
Type System: Crystal has a static type system, meaning that variable types are checked at compile-time, ensuring better type safety. Dart, on the other hand, has an optional static type system, allowing developers to choose whether to use type annotations or rely on dynamic type inference.
Concurrency: Crystal supports lightweight fibers, allowing concurrent programming with low memory footprint. It uses the Fibers API to manage concurrency and provides better control over parallelism. Conversely, Dart supports asynchronous programming through its Future and Stream classes, which allow developers to write non-blocking code that runs concurrently.
Compilation: Crystal is a compiled language and uses the Crystal compiler to translate its code into highly efficient native machine code, resulting in faster performance. On the contrary, Dart is a JIT-compiled language, which means it can be executed directly without the need for separate compilation steps, making it more suitable for rapid development and prototyping.
Standard Library: Crystal provides a rich standard library inspired by Ruby, which includes modules for networking, file I/O, regular expressions, and more. On the other hand, Dart's standard library is more focused on providing the core functionality and basic utilities required for building applications. Additional functionalities can be added through packages available on the Dart Package Manager (pub.dev).
Integration: Crystal can interoperate with C code, allowing developers to use existing C libraries and make system calls directly. This makes it easier to leverage existing software and libraries written in C. In contrast, Dart has better integration with JavaScript, allowing developers to reuse existing JavaScript code and libraries easily. This makes it suitable for building web applications and targeting both web browsers and server-side development.

In summary, Crystal and Dart differ in terms of syntax, type system, concurrency models, compilation approaches, standard libraries, and integration capabilities. While Crystal offers a Ruby-like syntax and static type checking, Dart has a syntax similar to Java or JavaScript and supports optional static typing. Crystal leverages lightweight fibers for concurrency, whereas Dart provides support for asynchronous programming. Crystal is a compiled language, whereas Dart is JIT-compiled. The standard libraries of both languages vary in terms of features and inspirations, and they have different integration capabilities with C and JavaScript respectively.

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Advice on Dart, Crystal

Muhamed

Apr 28, 2020

Needs adviceon

Python

JavaScript

Django

I am currently learning web development with Python and JavaScript course by CS50 Harvard university. It covers python, Flask, Django, SQL, Travis CI, javascript,HTML ,CSS and more. I am very interested in Flutter app development. Can I know what is the difference between learning these above-mentioned frameworks vs learning flutter directly? I am planning to learn flutter so that I can do both web development and app development. Are there any perks of learning these frameworks before flutter?

737k views737k

Comments

Zuriel

Jun 7, 2020

Needs advice

Can anyone help me decide what's best for app development or even android Oreo development? I'm in a state dilemma at the moment. I want to do Android programming, not necessarily web development. I have heard a lot of people recommend one of these, and it seems that both the tools can do the job. Which language would you choose?

291k views291k

Comments

My Learning Point

Apr 3, 2021

Review

As a fresher when you want to start Android developement you should have to learn first basic of android. Then you can go with Dart to learn CrosPlatform App developement with Flutter. Flutter is the future trending framwork to develope applications for web,Mobile, windows, mac... But Before start with Flutter You should have basics of Android app development with Android studio. If you want to develop ios App, should start basic developement with XCode.

200 views200

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Dart	Crystal
Dart is a cohesive, scalable platform for building apps that run on the web (where you can use Polymer) or on servers (such as with Google Cloud Platform). Use the Dart language, libraries, and tools to write anything from simple scripts to full-featured apps.	Crystal is a programming language that resembles Ruby but compiles to native code and tries to be much more efficient, at the cost of disallowing certain dynamic aspects of Ruby.
Dart’s comprehensive libraries give you lots of choices;Compilation to JavaScript lets you deploy Dart apps now;Pub package manager;Dev Server	Ruby-inspired syntax.;Statically type-checked but without having to specify the type of variables or method arguments.;Be able to call C code by writing bindings to it in Crystal.;Have compile-time evaluation and generation of code, to avoid boilerplate code.;Compile to efficient native code.
Statistics
GitHub Stars -	GitHub Stars 20.0K
GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks 1.7K
Stacks 4.0K	Stacks 339
Followers 3.8K	Followers 350
Votes 452	Votes 286
Pros & Cons
Pros 59 Backed by Google 53 Flutter 39 Twice the speed of Javascript 35 Great tools 30 Scalable Cons 3 Locked in - JS or TS interop is very hard to accomplish 3 Lack of ORM 0 A	Pros 38 Compiles to efficient native code 36 Ruby inspired syntax 32 Performance oriented - C-like speeds 23 Gem-like packages, called Shards 20 Can call C code using Crystal bindings Cons 13 Small community 3 No windows support 1 No Oracle lib

What are some alternatives to Dart, Crystal?

JavaScript

JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.

Python

Python is a general purpose programming language created by Guido Van Rossum. Python is most praised for its elegant syntax and readable code, if you are just beginning your programming career python suits you best.

PHP

Fast, flexible and pragmatic, PHP powers everything from your blog to the most popular websites in the world.

Ruby

Ruby is a language of careful balance. Its creator, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, blended parts of his favorite languages (Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp) to form a new language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming.

Java

Java is a programming language and computing platform first released by Sun Microsystems in 1995. There are lots of applications and websites that will not work unless you have Java installed, and more are created every day. Java is fast, secure, and reliable. From laptops to datacenters, game consoles to scientific supercomputers, cell phones to the Internet, Java is everywhere!

Golang

Go is expressive, concise, clean, and efficient. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel type system enables flexible and modular program construction. Go compiles quickly to machine code yet has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. It's a fast, statically typed, compiled language that feels like a dynamically typed, interpreted language.

HTML5

HTML5 is a core technology markup language of the Internet used for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web. As of October 2014 this is the final and complete fifth revision of the HTML standard of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The previous version, HTML 4, was standardised in 1997.

C#

C# (pronounced "See Sharp") is a simple, modern, object-oriented, and type-safe programming language. C# has its roots in the C family of languages and will be immediately familiar to C, C++, Java, and JavaScript programmers.

Scala

Scala is an acronym for “Scalable Language”. This means that Scala grows with you. You can play with it by typing one-line expressions and observing the results. But you can also rely on it for large mission critical systems, as many companies, including Twitter, LinkedIn, or Intel do. To some, Scala feels like a scripting language. Its syntax is concise and low ceremony; its types get out of the way because the compiler can infer them.

Elixir

Elixir leverages the Erlang VM, known for running low-latency, distributed and fault-tolerant systems, while also being successfully used in web development and the embedded software domain.