Dart vs Flutter: What are the differences?

Introduction

Dart and Flutter are both popular tools used for developing mobile applications. While Dart is a programming language, Flutter is an open-source UI toolkit. Here are the key differences between Dart and Flutter.

1. Compilation: Dart is a compiled language, which means that the code is converted into machine code before it can be executed. On the other hand, Flutter uses a just-in-time (JIT) compiler during development and an ahead-of-time (AOT) compiler for production, making it highly efficient and fast.

2. Platform Support: Dart is a language that can be used to develop applications for multiple platforms, including mobile, desktop, and web. In contrast, Flutter is specifically designed for building mobile applications and provides excellent cross-platform capabilities, allowing developers to write code once and run it on both Android and iOS platforms.

3. User Interface Development: Dart provides a wide range of libraries and tools for building user interfaces, allowing developers a lot of flexibility and control over the UI. Flutter, on the other hand, comes with its own set of widgets that are highly customizable and offer a rich and native-like user experience. This makes UI development in Flutter faster and more efficient as compared to Dart.

4. Hot Reload: One of the standout features of Flutter is its hot reload capability, which allows developers to see the changes made to the code in real-time without restarting the application. This significantly speeds up the development process and enables quick iteration. Dart, on the other hand, does not have such a feature built-in.

5. Community and Ecosystem: Dart has been around for a longer time compared to Flutter and has a larger community and ecosystem. It has a wide range of libraries and frameworks available, making it easier for developers to find solutions to their problems. Flutter, although rapidly growing, has a smaller community and a more focused ecosystem, which may limit the availability of certain libraries or tools.

6. Learning Curve: Dart is a language that is relatively easy to learn, especially for developers who have experience with object-oriented programming. It has clear syntax and familiar concepts, which makes it accessible to a wide range of developers. Flutter, on the other hand, requires developers to learn its specific widget tree structure and reactive programming concepts, which may have a slightly steeper learning curve.

In Summary, Dart and Flutter have some key differences. Dart is a versatile programming language that can be used for different platforms, while Flutter is a UI toolkit specifically designed for mobile app development. Flutter provides a powerful UI development experience, with hot reload and a rich set of customizable widgets, while Dart offers a larger community and a wider range of libraries for various applications.