Why Google’s Dart programming language and Flutter are growing so fast

Dart, a programming language built by Google and used for mobile development, has grown 532% and was named the fastest growing programming language by GitHub last year. Its growth is driven by Flutter, a toolkit built by Google. This allows developers to easily design the look and feel of their apps and make changes in real time. Dart and Flutter are popular among companies such as eBay and Groupon for building mobile apps, and have grown a lot from Chinese giants such as Alibaba, Baidu, ByteDance and Tencent. For more articles, visit the Business Insider home page.

In 2011, Google introduced a programming language called Dart to help engineers develop apps. The ultimate in that language has become the “secret source” of an open source toolkit called Flutter, launched by Google in 2017 to help users design the look and feel of mobile and web apps. It was.

The popularity of darts has skyrocketed since then:

Last year, the open source project hosting platform GitHub designated Dart as the fastest-growing programming language, with site usage increasing significantly by 532% between October 2018 and September 2019. (GitHub doesn’t disclose data on the fastest growing programming language of the year).

With Flutter and Dart, developers can create fast, elegant and useful apps, and collaborate faster and easier, with designers and developers seeing changes in real time.

Today, big companies like eBay, BMW, Square, Groupon, Capital One, and of course Google itself use Flutter and Dart to create apps. The duo has also taken off in China, and giants such as Alibaba, Baidu, ByteDance and Tencent are also using them. According to Google, the Google Play store currently has about 125,000 apps built with Dart and Flutter.

“We’ve seen many other companies start experimenting,” eBay’s senior Flutter developer and technical lead Larry McKenzie told Business Insider. He added that even banks and companies that traditionally do not have “strong engineering depth” are learning to adopt Flutter.

According to an August survey by the Flutter team, the percentage of users working in the enterprise rose from 26% to 31% between May and August.

Here’s how Dart and Flutter started on Google and how they became popular thanks to the surge in demand for mobile apps.

How Google builds and uses Dart to make sure the app is “combat tested”

Google started building Dart in 2011 to see if it could speed up development and scripts that allow programs to perform tasks automatically. The language is designed for large applications and works with JavaScript, the most popular programming language for web development.

“We started building this framework as an experiment and found that we could build some great experiences that leverage learning on the web,” said Tim Sneath, product management director at Google’s Flutter and Dart. I am.

Since then, Google has used Dart to build some of the largest applications, including the Google Pay app, its advertising sales platform Google Ads, and the gaming platform Stadia’s companion app.

“It gives us confidence when we ship to other external customers,” Sneath said. “They have been tested in combat, so you can rely on dirt.”

In 2014, Google also launched Flutter as a “little experiment,” says Sneath. Originally called Sky, it still uses JavaScript, but the team found Dart to be a better choice. Flutter makes it easy for developers to design the look, behavior, and feel of their apps. According to Sneath, “you can control every pixel on the screen,” so it includes customizable widgets for features such as scrolling, navigation, icons, and fonts.

Flutter works on any platform, so developers don’t have to worry about designing different versions of apps for different device types and generations.

“As a designer, you have more control over your visuals,” says Snice. “You are not limited by trying to keep these older iPhone devices compatible with older Android devices, so you can build with the widgets, designs, and visuals you need.”

In particular, Flutter also uses a technique called “stateful hot reload.” This allows developers to see what changes they make in the app will look like in real time.

For example, a designer can sit with a developer and make suggestions on what to adjust, and when the developer makes changes to the code, they can see those changes happen live. Therefore, the feedback loop between the designer and the developer is much tighter.

“Flutter [developers’] “I want to make my wildest dream come true,” said Snice.

Jamie Iannone, CEO of EBay.Web Summit Harry Murphy / Sports Files via Getty Images

How companies like eBay and Groupon use Dart

When Google released the 1.0 version of Flutter in December 2018, eBay was building the Motors app used to buy and sell cars and auto parts.

When the team evaluated what they needed to build the app, Flutter was the best technology to meet all the requirements, including speed and compatibility with different mobile devices, so we decided to use Flutter in the end. .. The team tried Flutter and held a workshop to learn Dart.

These tools made it easy for developers to create Motors apps. For example, the team used the Dart for the Motors app to build an image gallery feature that allowed them to classify images of cars listed on eBay.

“This is a technology choice we found to help us act quickly,” said Mackenzie. “So far, I’m really successful.”

Similarly, last year Groupon worked on improving tools for merchants and small businesses, using Dart regardless of whether merchants need to set up individual campaigns or process payments. , Developed a mobile application that can manage business interactions.

The team was looking for a way to speed up the release of the code, so they researched various platforms such as Facebook’s React and Flutter. Some of my teammates working on mobile applications were reading about Dart and Flutter, so I suggested the idea of ​​using them.

The team decided on Flutter because it was easy to use and it was easy to involve the designer. Groupon CTO John Higginson also states that it is faster than other options, including Facebook’s open source mobile application development software, React Native.

Workers are working on a project at Groupon International Headquarters in Chicago, Illinois on June 10, 2011.Scott Olson / Getty Images

Also, Dart is similar to Java, the programming language that Groupon primarily uses, so engineers could easily understand it.

“It’s a familiar language,” Higginson said. “You don’t need a lot of learning or retraining to be productive.”

Engineers can use Flutter and Dart to create mobile applications that work on both iOS and Android.

“I really like the ability to create compelling user experiences for the ecosystem itself with dirt and flutter,” Higginson said.

Why dirt is growing so fast

For engineers, Dart is an entry point for building mobile applications, and large companies are looking at Flutter to facilitate mobile application development. Both are driving Dart’s popularity.

As Higginson said, dirt is not difficult to learn either. Mackenzie of eBay said his team has no learning curve.

“It’s very easy to learn and very easy to write,” he said. “That means you spend a lot less time explaining the language to people. It greatly reduces the complexity of your code.”

In addition, according to Google’s Sneath, the enthusiasm of the open source community has helped Dart and Flutter grow into one of the biggest software projects on GitHub. Meetups about Dart and Flutter are out there all over the world. The Flutter Interact conference was attended by 150 people last year, with virtually more than 800,000 people attending and more than 10,000 people attending the conference-related community groups.

Google has also been particularly helpful in providing resources and new features for using dirt and flutter, which helped it grow rapidly, says Groupon’s Higginson.

But according to Mackenzie, the biggest reason Dart has grown so fast is that it’s fun to use. This speeds up the development cycle, gives engineers immediate feedback, and makes the experience “much more enjoyable.”

“Users really loved it,” Mackenzie said. “It’s the type that really drives much of this growth, because you’ll have time to think, play, experiment, and do things you’ve never done before. Because. “

Flutter is popular in China, and more recently in India, overtaking China as the country with the most Flutter developers.

The future of dirt

According to Groupon’s Higginson, the industry is at the forefront of a new generation of programming languages, as evidenced by Dart’s surge in popularity. Java and Python are widely used today, but Higginson predicts that Dart, Rust, and Elixir will become even more popular in the future.

Currently, Dart is primarily focused on mobile development, but Higginson can see that Python has become a more general-purpose language, just as it has dramatically expanded from its roots in data analytics. Already, developers can use Dart to build payment services, data models, desktop applications, and more.

Read more: According to GitHub, Python has overtaken Java as one of the hottest programming languages ​​in the world. Here’s how the AI ​​work boom has helped developers earn six-digit salaries in easy-to-learn languages.

Mackenzie only expects the darts trajectory to continue in use and recruitment.

“The development experience with Dart is better than traditional Android and traditional iOS development, so once you try it, you don’t want to go back,” Mackenzie said.

Do you have any hints? Contact this reporter via email at [email protected], Signal at 646.376.6106, Telegram at @ rosaliechan, or TwitterDM at @ rosaliechan17. (PR only by email.) Other types of secure messaging are available upon request.

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