Get Advice Icon

Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

Dart

3.9K
3.7K
+ 1
452
Scala

11K
7.8K
+ 1
1.5K
Add tool

Dart vs Scala: What are the differences?

Dart vs. Scala: Key Differences

Dart and Scala are both powerful programming languages, but they have several key differences that set them apart. Here are 6 important distinctions:

  1. Language Paradigm: Dart is primarily an object-oriented language with support for mixins and interfaces, while Scala is a more versatile language that combines object-oriented and functional programming paradigms. Scala's functional programming capabilities make it suitable for concurrent and distributed computing tasks.

  2. Type System: Dart is a strictly typed language with static type checking, meaning that variables must be declared with specific types and their types are checked at compile-time. Scala, on the other hand, is a statically typed language that also supports type inference, allowing the compiler to determine the types of variables based on their usage.

  3. Concurrency: Scala has built-in support for concurrency with its actor model, which allows programmers to easily create and manage concurrent processes. Dart, on the other hand, uses isolates for concurrency, which are lightweight, independent workers that communicate via message passing.

  4. Tooling and Ecosystem: Dart has a strong emphasis on developer productivity and provides a rich set of tools and libraries for web and mobile app development. Scala has a mature ecosystem with a wide range of libraries for various purposes, including web development, data processing, and machine learning.

  5. Performance: Dart is known for its excellent performance in web applications, thanks to the Dart VM and its just-in-time (JIT) compilation. Scala, on the other hand, can achieve high performance through its static type system, advanced compiler optimizations, and the ability to leverage the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) ecosystem.

  6. Community and Adoption: Dart is developed and supported by Google, which gives it a strong backing and support from a large community of developers. Scala is backed by Lightbend (formerly Typesafe) and has gained popularity in the data engineering and big data communities due to its integration with popular big data tools like Apache Spark.

In summary, Dart is a primarily object-oriented language with a focus on web and mobile app development, while Scala is a more versatile language with support for both object-oriented and functional programming paradigms, making it suitable for a wide range of tasks.

Advice on Dart and Scala
Needs advice
on
ClojureClojure
and
ScalaScala

Basically, I am looking for a good language that compiles to Java and JavaScript(and can use their libraries/frameworks). These JVM languages seem good to me, but I have no interest in Android. Which programming language is the best of these? I am looking for one with high money and something functional.

Edit: Kotlin was originally on this list but I removed it since I had no interest in Android

See more
Replies (3)
Recommends
on
ScalaScala

Clojure is a Lisp dialect, so if you like Lisp that's probably the way to go. Scala is more popular and broadly used, and has a larger job market especially for data engineering. Both are functional but Scala is more interoperable with Java libraries, probably a big factor in its popularity. I prefer Scala for a number of reasons, but in terms of jobs Scala is the clear leader.

See more
Recommends
on
ScalaScala

Scala has more momentum. It is good for back-end programming. The popular big data framework Spark is written in Scala. Spark is a marketable skill.

If you need to program something very dynamic like old school A.I., Clojure is attractive. You would chose Scala if prefer a statically typed language, and Clojure if you prefer a dynamically typed language.

See more
ivanopagano
Senior Consultant at scalac.io · | 1 upvotes · 34.7K views
Recommends

It's not clear exactly what you mean by "high money", you mean financial support to the language, money paid for a job, economic health of the market the language is positioned on?

In any case, it's very hard to give any advice here, since you'd need to provide details on the intended usage, what sector, kind of product/service, team size, potential customer type... Both languages are very general purpose and decently supported, each have its own pros and cons, both are functional as approach, and neither is really mainstream.

See more
Needs advice
on
DartDartFirebaseFirebase
and
PythonPython

I want to create a mobile-first e-commerce platform app. I think Dart and Flutter is a way for me to build cross-platform apps from a single codebase but I might be wrong so what do you guys think?

I also don't know what to do about the back-end. I mean managing the database of products and users. handing orders and invoices. I think Firebase can be an answer to my problems but how far I can go with firebase and its user authentication and database tools? Just firebase is enough for all my back-end needs?

What suits my needs, a relational database or a non-relational database?

Do I need to learn another programming language for handling back-end, like Python or Go?

I would appreciate your opinion. Thanks

See more
Replies (1)
Mohamed Reda
Recommends
on
DartDartFirebaseFirebase

Hi, I have 3 years with Flutter and I can see that Flutter with Firebase will be a good choice for you, Just start with Firebase, it's a little bit expensive when you have a lot of users, but there you will have some money to build your own API using any other language, and here I recommend Elixir or Python.

And about what you need to learn: - Dart - Flutter - State management for Flutter - Firebase

Then you can publish your app finally, and I wish you a happy published app :)

See more
Needs advice
on
DartDart
and
KotlinKotlin

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?

See more
Replies (4)
Ondrej Malek
Recommends
on
DartDart

I assume that you mean Flutter by Dart. I have over 6 years experience programming in Android SDK, but about 1,5 month in Flutter. So far I think that Flutter is the future for mobile development. Flutter SDK is much better designed. Ecosystem of libraries seems having much higher quality. I would even say that android opensource libs are having really poor quality. Many times I am wondering how can garbage like that have so many stars at GitHub. Android SDK is hard to compose so you reinvent even basic things on and on, which is totally different story at Flutter. Lolcycle? Both are having good documentation. I quess apps in Flutter can be done in 1/3 of time compared to develop AndroidSDK and iOS, its design is that much better and contemporary. As of language comparison - Kotlin is better, but the difference is not that important. Go from one language to other is no problem. Dart is being updated with new features.

See more
Recommends
on
DartDart

I've selected Flutter and Dart for my side projects and never regretted. Dart learning curve is easy after any OOP language . Flutter as a framework is also has a low entry threshold. I've already started development after a week of learning. Pros for me: code can be build for Android and IOS devices (for ios you need mac or VM), apps written in Dart have great performance on each of these platforms, flexibility. Cons: if you want to build a product as a business and want to hire a new Flutter Developer in the future it can be a problem as the framework and language is not popular for the moment.

See more
Ranjeet Sinha
Senior Software Engineer · | 3 upvotes · 279.5K views
Recommends
on
KotlinKotlin

It depends on what is the purpose of your app development. Do you want to make one app that shares the codebase for both iOS and Android? If yes, then Dart is the way to go. Does your app include interacting with hardware features like camera, Bluetooth, if yes, then go for native Android for better performance? Dart is good for simpler UI apps where you just do basic crud operations over the network and show data but if you need richer UI experience go with native.

See more
Tran Phuc
CTO at Nextfunc Co., Ltd · | 3 upvotes · 279.5K views
Recommends
on
DartDart

I have worked in mobile development since 2010. I have experienced myself on various techs including Native SDK (Android), React Native (from 2016) and Flutter (2018). Almost the apps nowadays can be built using cross-platforms frameworks like React Native or Flutter. I suggest you start with Flutter. Flutter SDK is designed well to speed up your development and it still keeps the quality for your apps. If you're familiar with OOP languages (Java, C#...), switching to Dart is really quick and easy. Of course, sometimes you will need to dive deep into native parts but almost the cases you don't need. Good luck!

See more
Needs advice
on
DartDartDjangoDjango
and
JavaScriptJavaScript

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?

See more
Replies (5)
Gagan Jakhotiya
Engineering Manager at BigBasket · | 11 upvotes · 238.7K views
Recommends
on
Node.jsNode.js

Hey Muhamed, For web development, you'll have to learn how to write backend APIs and how to build UI for browsers, apps, etc. If you're just starting off with programming, I'd suggest you stick to one language and trying developing everything using it to cut the unnecessary learning overhead. Although Python and JavaScript are very similar for beginners, JavaScript is the only available option for both frontend and backend development for a web application. You can start working with Node.js for your API development and Vanilla JS along with HTML/CSS for UI. You'll only need to learn one language to do all of this. Hope this helps.

See more
Dennis Barzanoff
Recommends
on
DartDart

Flutter is good for everything and it is getting better as I am speaking. Flutter Web is almost ready for production and I have made 2 complex working websites already.

See more
Recommends
on
DartDart

Well. Flutter is just a Framework (just like Django btw.) and it uses Dart as a programming language. Django is kind of solving a different problem than Dart. Dart is intened for use in Front End Applications and Django is a Framework for Back-End Web Development.

So if you want to program Flutter Apps (although i wouldn't recommend it for any serious web development yet since Flutter web isn't very mature yet) i would recommend you just lern Dart.

See more
Yohnathan Carletti
Senior Technical Product Manager · | 3 upvotes · 232.7K views
Recommends
on
DartDart

From a management and hiring perspective, I recommend Flutter (Dart). It provides native solutions to both mobile platform ( (Android and IOS) while having the same knowledge. Hiring managers look at this as an advantage since a developer can provide solutions for both platforms whit the same knowledge. The Flutter framework is growing and there is a lot of resources to ground your knowledge and start experimenting. Dart is also a great language that covers most E2E necessities, so again, no further need of learning one language for FE and another for BE and services. It is my belief that Dart will surpass Kotlin soon, and will leverage to Python and Java in the upcoming year.

See more
Recommends
on
DartDart

If you are interested in Flutter, learn it on your own time, parallel to the course. No matter what order you do them, eventually you will end up learning them all anyway ;-)

See more
Needs advice
on
GolangGolangNode.jsNode.js
and
ScalaScala

Finding the best server-side tool for building a personal information organizer that focuses on performance, simplicity, and scalability.

performance and scalability get a prototype going fast by keeping codebase simple find hosting that is affordable and scales well (Java/Scala-based ones might not be affordable)

See more
Replies (1)
David Annez
VP Product at loveholidays · | 5 upvotes · 318.1K views
Recommends
on
Node.jsNode.js
at

I've picked Node.js here but honestly it's a toss up between that and Go around this. It really depends on your background and skillset around "get something going fast" for one of these languages. Based on not knowing that I've suggested Node because it can be easier to prototype quickly and built right is performant enough. The scaffolding provided around Node.js services (Koa, Restify, NestJS) means you can get up and running pretty easily. It's important to note that the tooling surrounding this is good also, such as tracing, metrics et al (important when you're building production ready services).

You'll get more scalability and perf from go, but balancing them out I would say that you'll get pretty far with a well built Node.JS service (our entire site with over 1.5k requests/m scales easily and holds it's own with 4 pods in production.

Without knowing the scale you are building for and the systems you are using around it it's hard to say for certain this is the right route.

See more
Decisions about Dart and Scala
Frank Neff

We're moving from Java to Kotlin with our Microservice Stack (Spring Boot) because it is excellently supported by framework and tools and the learning curve is not very steep Kotlin is way more straightforward and convenient to use while providing less boilerplate and more strictness, which finally leads to better code, which is more readable, maintainable and less error-prone. We especially like Kotlin's (functional) data structures, which are, e.g. compared to Scala, easier to understand and don't require deep knowledge in functional programming.

See more
Chose
PythonPython
over
ScalaScala

I am working in the domain of big data and machine learning. I am helping companies with bringing their machine learning models to the production. In many projects there is a tendency to port Python, PySpark code to Scala and Scala Spark.

This yields to longer time to market and a lot of mistakes due to necessity to understand and re-write the code. Also many libraries/apis that data scientists/machine learning practitioners use are not available in jvm ecosystem.

Simply, refactoring (if necessary) and organising the code of the data scientists by following best practices of software development is less error prone and faster comparing to re-write in Scala.

Pipeline orchestration tools such as Luigi/Airflow is python native and fits well to this picture.

I have heard some arguments against Python such as, it is slow, or it is hard to maintain due to its dynamically typed language. However cost/benefit of time consumed porting python code to java/scala alone would be enough as a counter-argument. ML pipelines rarerly contains a lot of code (if that is not the case, such as complex domain and significant amount of code, then scala would be a better fit).

In terms of performance, I did not see any issues with Python. It is not the fastest runtime around but ML applications are rarely time-critical (majority of them is batch based).

I still prefer Scala for developing APIs and for applications where the domain contains complex logic.

See more
Lucas Litton
Founder & CEO at Macombey · | 8 upvotes · 268.5K views

JavaScript is at the forefront of our entire development approach. Not only do we use different JavaScript frameworks and management tools, but we also use pure vanilla JavaScript to solve simple problems throughout all of our client's builds. JavaScript is a general purpose programming language that can be blazing fast and fun to work with. There's not one project we are working on that doesn't involve it.

See more

We needed to incorporate Big Data Framework for data stream analysis, specifically Apache Spark / Apache Storm. The three options of languages were most suitable for the job - Python, Java, Scala.

The winner was Python for the top of the class, high-performance data analysis libraries (NumPy, Pandas) written in C, quick learning curve, quick prototyping allowance, and a great connection with other future tools for machine learning as Tensorflow.

The whole code was shorter & more readable which made it easier to develop and maintain.

See more
Manage your open source components, licenses, and vulnerabilities
Learn More
Pros of Dart
Pros of Scala
  • 59
    Backed by Google
  • 53
    Flutter
  • 39
    Twice the speed of Javascript
  • 35
    Great tools
  • 30
    Scalable
  • 27
    Open source
  • 26
    Made for the future
  • 25
    Can be used on Frontend
  • 22
    Polymer Dart
  • 22
    Angular Dart
  • 18
    Cross platform
  • 16
    Like Java
  • 14
    Easy to learn
  • 13
    Dartanalyzer
  • 12
    Runs on Google Cloud Platform
  • 10
    Easy to Understand
  • 9
    Amazing concurrency primitives
  • 8
    Is to JS what C is to ASM
  • 7
    Flutter works with darts
  • 3
    R
  • 3
    Can run Dart in AWS Lambda
  • 1
    Looks familiar, with purposely implemented features
  • 188
    Static typing
  • 178
    Pattern-matching
  • 175
    Jvm
  • 172
    Scala is fun
  • 138
    Types
  • 95
    Concurrency
  • 88
    Actor library
  • 86
    Solve functional problems
  • 81
    Open source
  • 80
    Solve concurrency in a safer way
  • 44
    Functional
  • 24
    Fast
  • 23
    Generics
  • 18
    It makes me a better engineer
  • 17
    Syntactic sugar
  • 13
    Scalable
  • 10
    First-class functions
  • 10
    Type safety
  • 9
    Interactive REPL
  • 8
    Expressive
  • 7
    SBT
  • 6
    Case classes
  • 6
    Implicit parameters
  • 4
    Rapid and Safe Development using Functional Programming
  • 4
    JVM, OOP and Functional programming, and static typing
  • 4
    Object-oriented
  • 4
    Used by Twitter
  • 3
    Functional Proframming
  • 2
    Spark
  • 2
    Beautiful Code
  • 2
    Safety
  • 2
    Growing Community
  • 1
    DSL
  • 1
    Rich Static Types System and great Concurrency support
  • 1
    Naturally enforce high code quality
  • 1
    Akka Streams
  • 1
    Akka
  • 1
    Reactive Streams
  • 1
    Easy embedded DSLs
  • 1
    Mill build tool
  • 0
    Freedom to choose the right tools for a job

Sign up to add or upvote prosMake informed product decisions

Cons of Dart
Cons of Scala
  • 3
    Lack of ORM
  • 3
    Locked in - JS or TS interop is very hard to accomplish
  • 0
    A
  • 11
    Slow compilation time
  • 7
    Multiple ropes and styles to hang your self
  • 6
    Too few developers available
  • 4
    Complicated subtyping
  • 2
    My coworkers using scala are racist against other stuff

Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions

539
4.5K
93.8K
2.8K
11.9K
112.4K
- No public GitHub repository available -

What is Dart?

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.

What is 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.

Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

What companies use Dart?
What companies use Scala?
Manage your open source components, licenses, and vulnerabilities
Learn More

Sign up to get full access to all the companiesMake informed product decisions

What tools integrate with Dart?
What tools integrate with Scala?

Sign up to get full access to all the tool integrationsMake informed product decisions

Blog Posts

Aug 28 2019 at 3:10AM

Segment

PythonJavaAmazon S3+16
7
2676
DockerAmazon EC2Scala+8
6
2795
What are some alternatives to Dart and Scala?
TypeScript
TypeScript is a language for application-scale JavaScript development. It's a typed superset of JavaScript that compiles to plain JavaScript.
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.
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.
Kotlin
Kotlin is a statically typed programming language for the JVM, Android and the browser, 100% interoperable with Java
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!
See all alternatives