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Dart vs Xamarin: What are the differences?

  1. 1. Language Syntax: Dart uses a C-style syntax, similar to languages like Java and C#, which makes it easier for developers to understand and write code. Xamarin, on the other hand, uses C# as its primary language, which means developers familiar with C# can quickly jump into Xamarin development without much learning curve.

  2. 2. Platform Support: Dart is primarily used for developing applications for the Flutter framework, which supports Android, iOS, and web platforms. Xamarin, on the other hand, offers extensive platform support and allows developers to build applications for Android, iOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS, and even Windows.

  3. 3. Development Environment: Dart applications can be developed using various IDEs such as Visual Studio Code, IntelliJ IDEA, and Android Studio. Xamarin, on the other hand, provides developers with a powerful and integrated development environment called Xamarin Studio, which allows seamless cross-platform development in one place.

  4. 4. Frameworks and Libraries: Dart has Flutter as its primary framework, which comes with a comprehensive set of ready-to-use UI widgets. Xamarin, on the other hand, integrates with the native development frameworks and libraries of each platform, giving developers access to a wide range of native APIs and capabilities.

  5. 5. Performance: Dart, being a compiled language, offers excellent performance and fast start-up times for Flutter applications. Xamarin, on the other hand, uses a combination of Just-in-Time (JIT) compilation and Ahead-of-Time (AOT) compilation, providing a balance between development speed and runtime performance.

  6. 6. Community and Ecosystem: Dart has a growing and vibrant community, but it is relatively smaller compared to other languages like C#. Xamarin, being backed by Microsoft, has a larger developer community and a well-established ecosystem with a wide range of resources and support.

In Summary, Dart and Xamarin have key differences in language syntax, platform support, development environment, frameworks and libraries, performance, and community/ecosystem, making them suitable for different types of projects and developer preferences.

Advice on Dart and Xamarin
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?

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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.

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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.

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Ranjeet Sinha
Senior Software Engineer · | 3 upvotes · 256.8K 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.

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Tran Phuc
CTO at Nextfunc Co., Ltd · | 3 upvotes · 256.8K 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!

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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?

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Replies (5)
Gagan Jakhotiya
Engineering Manager at BigBasket · | 11 upvotes · 218.8K 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.

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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.

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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.

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Yohnathan Carletti
Senior Technical Product Manager · | 3 upvotes · 212.9K 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.

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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 ;-)

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Decisions about Dart and Xamarin
Lucas Litton
Founder & CEO at Macombey · | 8 upvotes · 246.6K 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.

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Pros of Dart
Pros of Xamarin
  • 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
  • 121
    Power of c# on mobile devices
  • 81
    Native performance
  • 79
    Native apps with native ui controls
  • 73
    No javascript - truely compiled code
  • 67
    Sharing more than 90% of code over all platforms
  • 45
    Ability to leverage visual studio
  • 44
    Mvvm pattern
  • 44
    Many great c# libraries
  • 36
    Amazing support
  • 34
    Powerful platform for .net developers
  • 19
    GUI Native look and Feel
  • 16
    Nuget package manager
  • 12
    Free
  • 9
    Backed by Microsoft
  • 9
    Enables code reuse on server
  • 8
    Faster Development
  • 7
    Use of third-party .NET libraries
  • 7
    It's free since Apr 2016
  • 7
    Best performance than other cross-platform
  • 7
    Easy Debug and Trace
  • 7
    Open Source
  • 6
    Mac IDE (Xamarin Studio)
  • 6
    Xamarin.forms is the best, it's amazing
  • 5
    That just work for every scenario
  • 5
    C# mult paradigm language
  • 5
    Power of C#, no javascript, visual studio
  • 4
    Great docs
  • 4
    Compatible to develop Hybrid apps
  • 4
    Microsoft stack
  • 4
    Microsoft backed
  • 3
    Well Designed
  • 3
    Small learning curve for Mobile developers
  • 2
    Ionic
  • 2
    Ability to leverage legacy C and C++

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Cons of Dart
Cons of Xamarin
  • 3
    Lack of ORM
  • 3
    Locked in - JS or TS interop is very hard to accomplish
  • 0
    A
  • 9
    Build times
  • 5
    Visual Studio
  • 4
    Price
  • 3
    Complexity
  • 3
    Scalability
  • 2
    Nuget
  • 2
    Maturity
  • 2
    Build Tools
  • 2
    Support
  • 0
    Maturidade
  • 0
    Performance

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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 Xamarin?

Xamarin’s Mono-based products enable .NET developers to use their existing code, libraries and tools (including Visual Studio*), as well as skills in .NET and the C# programming language, to create mobile applications for the industry’s most widely-used mobile devices, including Android-based smartphones and tablets, iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

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What companies use Xamarin?
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What are some alternatives to Dart and Xamarin?
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