Dart vs GWT

Overview

Dart

Stacks4.3K

Followers3.8K

Votes452

GWT

Stacks88

Followers100

Votes0

Dart vs GWT: What are the differences?

Introduction

Dart and GWT are both programming languages used for web development, albeit with some key differences. In this markdown, we will highlight the distinct features and characteristics of Dart and GWT.

1. Dart for Web vs. GWT for Java Developers

Dart is a programming language specifically designed for web development, whereas GWT (Google Web Toolkit) is primarily meant for Java developers. Dart provides a complete development ecosystem for web applications, including a virtual machine, libraries, package manager, and a modern syntax. On the other hand, GWT allows developers to write client-side web applications in Java, which are then compiled to JavaScript for execution.

2. Syntax and Compilation

Dart uses a single-language approach, where code is written in Dart and directly executed in its virtual machine or transpiled to JavaScript for compatibility. GWT, on the other hand, uses a two-language approach. While developers write code in Java, it is ultimately compiled to JavaScript, which is then executed in the browser. This compilation step in GWT allows for optimizations and is aimed at maximizing performance.

3. UI Development

Dart comes with a built-in library called "Flutter" that provides a framework for building UIs for mobile, web, and desktop applications. This allows developers to create responsive and visually appealing user interfaces using a single codebase. In contrast, GWT lacks a dedicated UI library and relies on the web standards like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, requiring developers to work with these technologies directly.

4. Tooling and Ecosystem

Dart offers a comprehensive set of development tools, including an IDE called "DartPad," a package manager called "pub," and a testing framework called "unittest." It also has a strong ecosystem with support for various libraries and frameworks. GWT, being focused on Java, benefits from the wide range of Java IDEs and build tools available. Additionally, GWT has a vibrant community and extensive documentation, making it easier for developers to find resources and solve problems.

5. Debugging and Productivity

One advantage of Dart is its ability to provide a debugger that can directly debug Dart code in the browser, similar to how developers debug JavaScript. This feature simplifies the debugging process and helps developers identify and fix issues more efficiently. GWT, on the other hand, requires developers to debug the Java code running in the browser, which can be more complex and time-consuming.

6. Language Features and Flexibility

Dart is a modern, object-oriented language with support for features like strong typing, lambdas, and async/await for handling asynchronous tasks. It offers a more flexible and expressive syntax, making the code easier to read and maintain. GWT, being based on Java, inherits the language's features and syntax but lacks some of the modern language constructs found in Dart.

In summary, Dart and GWT differ in their focus, syntax, UI development approach, tooling, debugging capabilities, and language features. Dart is designed specifically for web development, with a modern language and UI framework, while GWT is targeted towards Java developers, using Java as the primary language and compilation to JavaScript.

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Advice on Dart, GWT

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

Detailed Comparison

Dart	GWT
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.	It is a development toolkit for building and optimizing complex browser-based applications. Its goal is to enable productive development of high-performance web applications without the developer having to be an expert in browser quirks, XMLHttpRequest, and JavaScript.
Dart’s comprehensive libraries give you lots of choices;Compilation to JavaScript lets you deploy Dart apps now;Pub package manager;Dev Server	-
Statistics
Stacks 4.3K	Stacks 88
Followers 3.8K	Followers 100
Votes 452	Votes 0
Pros & Cons
Pros 60 Backed by Google 54 Flutter 39 Twice the speed of Javascript 35 Great tools 30 Scalable Cons 3 Lack of ORM 3 Locked in - JS or TS interop is very hard to accomplish 0 A	No community feedback yet

What are some alternatives to Dart, GWT?

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.

jQuery

jQuery is a cross-platform JavaScript library designed to simplify the client-side scripting of HTML.

AngularJS

AngularJS lets you write client-side web applications as if you had a smarter browser. It lets you use good old HTML (or HAML, Jade and friends!) as your template language and lets you extend HTML’s syntax to express your application’s components clearly and succinctly. It automatically synchronizes data from your UI (view) with your JavaScript objects (model) through 2-way data binding.

PHP

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

React

Lots of people use React as the V in MVC. Since React makes no assumptions about the rest of your technology stack, it's easy to try it out on a small feature in an existing project.

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.

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