In this article, we're going to break down a rather interesting type of application: the universal application, or cross-platform application. We'll touch upon some various methods of developing them, the tools available to help you build them, and weigh their benefits from both a user and developer's perspective. Let's get started!
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://blog.crowdbotics.com/understanding-universal-applications/
What are the main differences between Dart and JavaScript?
Some key points about Dart:
- Open-source
- Backed by Google and runs on Google Cloud Platform.
- Dart is approximately two times faster than JavaScript.
- Dart is type-safe and compiled with both AOT and JIT compilers.
- Dart is very scalable across projects.
- Dart is very similar to Javascript and easy to learn if you already know Javascript.
- Dart is used extensively for the Flutter mobile UI framework.
- Dart is fairly new to programmers and rarely used in the market.
- Dart has very limited resources online and it’s hard to find solutions to problems.
- Dart has a single object paradigm (classes).
- In Dart, you can’t rename the function without writing another assignment statement.
In comparison to JavaScript:
- JavaScript can be used for both web and mobile apps.
- It can be used for both frontend and backend, so JavaScript can run on every device.
- JavaScript has a huge community and a great number of frameworks available for front-end development.
- JavaScript is fast, flexible, and light-weight.
- For type safety, can leverage TypeScript features.
- Dependency management using package managers can become hard to maintain over time.
- Being a dynamic language, has its cons such as no type safety.
- There are constant changes as new frameworks land after a regular interval and sometimes it is hard to keep up to date.
- Multi-threading support is not available.