The Dart Programming Language

Dart is a class-based, object-oriented language that simplifies the development of structured modern apps, scales from small scripts to large applications, and can be compiled to JavaScript for use in any modern browser. In this rigorous but readable introductory text, Dart specification lead Gilad Bracha fully explains both the language and the ideas that have shaped it.

 

The Dart Programming Language offers an authoritative description of Dart for programmers, computer science students, and other well-qualified professionals. The text illuminates key programming constructs with significant examples, focusing on principles of the language, such as optional typing and pure object-orientation.

 

Bracha thoroughly explains reflection in Dart, showing how it is evolving into a form that programmers can easily apply without creating excessively large programs. He also shares valuable insights into Dart’s actor-style model for concurrency and asynchronous programming. Throughout, he covers both language semantics and the rationale for key features, helping you understand not just what Dart does, but why it works the way it does.

 

You will learn about

• Dart’s object model, in which everything is an object, even numbers and Boolean values
• How Dart programs are organized into modular libraries
• How Dart functions are structured, stored in variables, passed as parameters, and returned as results
• Dart’s innovative approach to optional typing
• How Dart handles expressions and statements
• How to use Dart’s implementation of reflection to introspect on libraries, classes, functions, and objects
• Isolates and other Dart features that support concurrency and distribution

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Gilad Bracha is a software engineer at Google where he works on Dart. In prior lives he has been a VP at SAP Labs, a Distinguished Engineer at Cadence, and a Computational Theologist and Distinguished Engineer at Sun. He is the creator of the Newspeak programming language, co-author of the Java Language and Virtual Machine Specifications, and a researcher in the area of object-oriented programming languages. Prior to joining Sun, he worked on Strongtalk, the Animorphic Smalltalk System. He received his B.Sc. in Mathematics and Computer Science from Ben Gurion University in Israel and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Utah.