Foreword
When I heard that we were starting work on Dart, a structured and scalable language with a fast virtual machine, a powerful editor, and a compiler to JavaScript, at first I didn’t believe it. “Could this be the project to make web programming easier for developers like me?” I hopefully wondered. Coming from a structured language background, and used to powerful developer tools, I’d been waiting for a more productive way to build larger modern web apps. The Dart project sounded like just what I was looking for. I grew up on object-oriented languages like C++, Java, and Ruby as I first built interactive websites and then later rich client-side web apps. I learned to be productive with classes, objects, and modular code. I appreciated IDEs for their analysis, refactoring, and navigation capabilities because they helped me write more complex, larger applications. Life was great. Looking for a new opportunity, I was lucky enough to get a job working with the Chrome team. For the first time, I learned how to exploit the modern browser, and I dove into the many HTML5 features. The modern web evolves very quickly and reaches so many people that it’s an exciting place to be. Life was even better.
Although I loved the iterative and fast-paced nature of web development, I was missing my structured languages and helpful tools. I wanted a way to build for modern browsers with IDEs that could perform code completion, languages that had real classes, and more.
So when I heard about Dart, I jumped at the opportunity to help out. Build for the most exciting platform with a development experience that I’m familiar and productive with? You bet!
I wasn’t the only developer who immediately joined the fun. The author of this book, Chris Buckett, is one of our earliest adopters of Dart. He started the Dartwatch blog on the day that Google announced Dart, and it’s still going strong. Chris has been with the project since the beginning, so it’s only natural that he is one of the first to write a book to help other developers learn Dart.
Chris is some sort of super author, for he has been able to write this book as the project was going through numerous changes to its libraries and language. He’s done a great job covering the many different aspects and features of the Dart project. I especially enjoyed his numerous examples of not only the core language features, but also the more advanced HTML5 features. Chris embraces the single-page app and shows how to use Dart to build modern browser-based apps. You’ll even learn how to program server-side Dart with this book!
After a year of hard work, tens of thousands of commits, thousands of bugs, and great community feedback, the dream of structured web programming is a reality. Although Dart isn’t done yet, thanks to Chris’s book, together we can have fun building great apps for the modern web. Enjoy!
SETH LADD
DEVELOPER ADVOCATE