Camp 1 · Step 1 of 12
Why Dart?
The friendly language that powers Flutter — one codebase, apps on every screen.
If you dream of building apps — iPhone, Android, web, desktop — from one codebase, the path leads through Flutter, Google's UI toolkit. And Flutter's engine room is Dart.
Built for user interfaces
Dart was designed (Google, 2011) around app development, and it shows:
- Familiar syntax — if you've glimpsed JavaScript or Java, Dart reads like a cousin
- Sound null safety — the "value was unexpectedly missing" crash, the most common bug in app development, is caught at compile time
- Hot reload — change code, see the running app update in under a second (via Flutter)
- Compiles both ways — to native machine code for release speed, or just-in-time for development speed
Where you'll see it
Flutter apps built with Dart: Google Pay, BMW's app, Alibaba's Xianyu, eBay Motors, and hundreds of thousands more. One team, one codebase, both app stores — the economics are the point.
First taste
main is the entry point, var infers the type, and $trail inside a
string inserts a variable — Dart's string interpolation, which you'll
use constantly.
What is the relationship between Dart and Flutter?
What's next
Hello Dart — functions, printing, and the interpolation superpower.