At the Devoxx conference in Belgium today, Google launched version 1.0 of its Dart SDK, the company’s cross-browser and open-source toolkit for structured Web applications. You can download the first stable release of Dart now from dartlang.org.
Google considers version 1.0 as the mark of Dart’s transition to a production-ready option for Web developers. Dart was first unveiled more than two years ago in October 2011.
Ever since, the company has been working with early adopters to mature the project and grow its community. In fact, the Dart SDK also features the Pub package manager, with more than 500 packages written not by Google, but by third-party developers.
In addition to the actual programming language, Dart SDK 1.0 features tools and core libraries to help make development workflow “simpler, faster, and more scalable,” according to Google. Also included is the Dart Editor, a development environment designed for developers managing a growing code base, thanks to features like code completion, refactoring, jump to definition, a debugger, hints, warnings, and so on. As for deployment, the dart2js translator allows Dart code to run in modern browsers.
Google has been pushing the performance of Dart’s generated JavaScript for months. In fact, the company says the dart2js output of the DeltaBlue benchmark now runs even faster than idiomatic JavaScript, the dart2js output code size has been substantially reduced, and the VM is now between 42 percent to 130 percent faster (depending on the benchmark) than idiomatic JavaScript running in V8.
For those who don’t know, Dart is Google’s open-source Web programming language. Dart’s ultimate goal is to replace JavaScript – not exactly something that can happen overnight.
Until now, Google seemed content with offering better performance, scaling for large projects, more security features, and slowly building out its alternative to help developers manage an evolving app. Now the company is ready for production – Dart SDK is no longer in beta or in milestone phase.
Developers, start your engines.
Top Image Credit: sergign
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