Google Aims For Web Development Bull's Eye With Dart

The goal of Dart is to make the creation of Web applications less of a hassle. Google said Dart is "a class-based optionally typed programming language for building Web applications."

In a blog post written on Google's Code blog, Dart Team Software Engineer Lars Bak said that the goal of Dart is to create a structured yet flexible language for Web programming; make Dart feel familiar and natural to programmers so it is easy to learn; and ensure that the new language delivers high performance on all modern Web browsers and environments that range from hand-held mobile devices to service-side execution.

"Dart targets a wide range of development scenarios: from a one-person project without much structure to a large-scale project needing formal types in the code to state programmer intent," Bak wrote. "To support this wide range of projects, Dart has optional types; this means you can start coding without types and add them later as needed. We believe Dart will be great for writing large Web applications."

According to Bak, Dart code can be executed in two different ways: On a native virtual machine, or on top of a JavaScript engine using a compiler that can translate Dart code into JavaScript.

"This means you can write a web application in Dart and have it compiled and run on any modern browser. The Dart VM is not currently integrated in Chrome but we plan to explore this option," Bak wrote.

Dart comes with a set of basic libraries and tools for checking, compiling and running Dart code, which Bak said will evolve as the developer community becomes more involved with the new language.

Along with launching Dart, Google also unveiled a Dart Web site that makes the language and its preliminary tools available as open source. The site also offers code samples, tutorials, libraries of supporting software, developer forums and more.