Jan Vladimir Mostert

Idea Incubator

Sep 23, 2016

Dart user here, everything you like about Typescript, you can find in Dart (Dart does it better IMO), if you use one of the Jetbrains IDEs, you get remote debugging (which means you can attach a debugger, add breakpoints and step through the code and view / change variables while stepping through the code from the breakpoint), you get obervatory out of the box which will allow you to do check for leaks or anything that could be slowing down your code.

Just like JavaScript, you don't have to recompile anything, just hit refresh in the browser and your changes will be there. Browser console is still available and if you use Dartium, you can actually click on the error and it'll highlight where in the Dart code the error occurred.

Unlike TypeScript, you also get polyfilling, so if a feature is partially supported in browsers but Dart offers that feature, Dart will generate workarounds in your generated JavaScript to make it work in those other browsers as well.

You don't need rollup with Dart, Dart already does a fantastic job minifying your generated JavaScript and using some plugins in the pubspec.yaml, you can also minify your CSS, compile SASS and LESS file without needing an external tool for that - simply run pub build and all those things are taken care of for you.

TheSheriff

Co-Founder, Founder, Entrepreneur & Problem Solver

Sep 23, 2016

@JanVladimirMostert Appreciated, sounds pretty cool. How's the community for it though? Compared to TS it's not really followed I've found. Additionally, this is a pure javascript based project and no css/sass and little html will be used at all. The polyfilling is great though, which is what I need :). And I mention rollupjs for its tree-shaking ability (main selling point, but does have many others) that essentially removes all the code that you don't use, such as if you only use a couple functions from jquery (An exaggeration.) - it will only include though functions.
The in browser dartium console sounds good too :).

Dart also has tree-shaking out of the box which removes dead code just like Rollup.js gives you.

The Dart community might be somewhat smaller than Typescript, but the people running the community are all of the best caliber software engineers / architects.

Dart has a Slack channel with over 600 members (I've never experienced a question not being answered on Slack), StackOverflow I struggle to answer people's questions, because somebody else would have already answered it by the time I hit submit and then there's also Gitter and a very active mailing list where the creators of Dart respond directly and where we have long discussions on what features to add to Dart and how to accomplish it.

See: https://www.dartlang.org/community

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