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Crystal vs Dart: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this comparison, we will look at the key differences between Crystal and Dart programming languages.

  1. Syntax: Crystal has a syntax similar to Ruby, making it easy for Ruby developers to transition into Crystal. On the other hand, Dart has a syntax similar to Java or JavaScript, making it more familiar to developers with a background in these languages.

  2. Type System: Crystal has a static type system, meaning that variable types are checked at compile-time, ensuring better type safety. Dart, on the other hand, has an optional static type system, allowing developers to choose whether to use type annotations or rely on dynamic type inference.

  3. Concurrency: Crystal supports lightweight fibers, allowing concurrent programming with low memory footprint. It uses the Fibers API to manage concurrency and provides better control over parallelism. Conversely, Dart supports asynchronous programming through its Future and Stream classes, which allow developers to write non-blocking code that runs concurrently.

  4. Compilation: Crystal is a compiled language and uses the Crystal compiler to translate its code into highly efficient native machine code, resulting in faster performance. On the contrary, Dart is a JIT-compiled language, which means it can be executed directly without the need for separate compilation steps, making it more suitable for rapid development and prototyping.

  5. Standard Library: Crystal provides a rich standard library inspired by Ruby, which includes modules for networking, file I/O, regular expressions, and more. On the other hand, Dart's standard library is more focused on providing the core functionality and basic utilities required for building applications. Additional functionalities can be added through packages available on the Dart Package Manager (pub.dev).

  6. Integration: Crystal can interoperate with C code, allowing developers to use existing C libraries and make system calls directly. This makes it easier to leverage existing software and libraries written in C. In contrast, Dart has better integration with JavaScript, allowing developers to reuse existing JavaScript code and libraries easily. This makes it suitable for building web applications and targeting both web browsers and server-side development.

In summary, Crystal and Dart differ in terms of syntax, type system, concurrency models, compilation approaches, standard libraries, and integration capabilities. While Crystal offers a Ruby-like syntax and static type checking, Dart has a syntax similar to Java or JavaScript and supports optional static typing. Crystal leverages lightweight fibers for concurrency, whereas Dart provides support for asynchronous programming. Crystal is a compiled language, whereas Dart is JIT-compiled. The standard libraries of both languages vary in terms of features and inspirations, and they have different integration capabilities with C and JavaScript respectively.

Advice on Crystal and Dart
Needs advice
on
DartDart
and
KotlinKotlin

Can anyone help me decide what's best for app development or even android Oreo development? I'm in a state dilemma at the moment. I want to do Android programming, not necessarily web development. I have heard a lot of people recommend one of these, and it seems that both the tools can do the job. Which language would you choose?

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Replies (4)
Ondrej Malek
Recommends
on
DartDart

I assume that you mean Flutter by Dart. I have over 6 years experience programming in Android SDK, but about 1,5 month in Flutter. So far I think that Flutter is the future for mobile development. Flutter SDK is much better designed. Ecosystem of libraries seems having much higher quality. I would even say that android opensource libs are having really poor quality. Many times I am wondering how can garbage like that have so many stars at GitHub. Android SDK is hard to compose so you reinvent even basic things on and on, which is totally different story at Flutter. Lolcycle? Both are having good documentation. I quess apps in Flutter can be done in 1/3 of time compared to develop AndroidSDK and iOS, its design is that much better and contemporary. As of language comparison - Kotlin is better, but the difference is not that important. Go from one language to other is no problem. Dart is being updated with new features.

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Recommends
on
DartDart

I've selected Flutter and Dart for my side projects and never regretted. Dart learning curve is easy after any OOP language . Flutter as a framework is also has a low entry threshold. I've already started development after a week of learning. Pros for me: code can be build for Android and IOS devices (for ios you need mac or VM), apps written in Dart have great performance on each of these platforms, flexibility. Cons: if you want to build a product as a business and want to hire a new Flutter Developer in the future it can be a problem as the framework and language is not popular for the moment.

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Tran Phuc
CTO at Nextfunc Co., Ltd · | 3 upvotes · 258.8K views
Recommends
on
DartDart

I have worked in mobile development since 2010. I have experienced myself on various techs including Native SDK (Android), React Native (from 2016) and Flutter (2018). Almost the apps nowadays can be built using cross-platforms frameworks like React Native or Flutter. I suggest you start with Flutter. Flutter SDK is designed well to speed up your development and it still keeps the quality for your apps. If you're familiar with OOP languages (Java, C#...), switching to Dart is really quick and easy. Of course, sometimes you will need to dive deep into native parts but almost the cases you don't need. Good luck!

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Ranjeet Sinha
Senior Software Engineer · | 3 upvotes · 258.8K views
Recommends
on
KotlinKotlin

It depends on what is the purpose of your app development. Do you want to make one app that shares the codebase for both iOS and Android? If yes, then Dart is the way to go. Does your app include interacting with hardware features like camera, Bluetooth, if yes, then go for native Android for better performance? Dart is good for simpler UI apps where you just do basic crud operations over the network and show data but if you need richer UI experience go with native.

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Needs advice
on
DartDartDjangoDjango
and
JavaScriptJavaScript

I am currently learning web development with Python and JavaScript course by CS50 Harvard university. It covers python, Flask, Django, SQL, Travis CI, javascript,HTML ,CSS and more. I am very interested in Flutter app development. Can I know what is the difference between learning these above-mentioned frameworks vs learning flutter directly? I am planning to learn flutter so that I can do both web development and app development. Are there any perks of learning these frameworks before flutter?

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Replies (5)
Gagan Jakhotiya
Engineering Manager at BigBasket · | 11 upvotes · 220.5K views
Recommends
on
Node.jsNode.js

Hey Muhamed, For web development, you'll have to learn how to write backend APIs and how to build UI for browsers, apps, etc. If you're just starting off with programming, I'd suggest you stick to one language and trying developing everything using it to cut the unnecessary learning overhead. Although Python and JavaScript are very similar for beginners, JavaScript is the only available option for both frontend and backend development for a web application. You can start working with Node.js for your API development and Vanilla JS along with HTML/CSS for UI. You'll only need to learn one language to do all of this. Hope this helps.

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Dennis Barzanoff
Recommends
on
DartDart

Flutter is good for everything and it is getting better as I am speaking. Flutter Web is almost ready for production and I have made 2 complex working websites already.

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Recommends
on
DartDart

Well. Flutter is just a Framework (just like Django btw.) and it uses Dart as a programming language. Django is kind of solving a different problem than Dart. Dart is intened for use in Front End Applications and Django is a Framework for Back-End Web Development.

So if you want to program Flutter Apps (although i wouldn't recommend it for any serious web development yet since Flutter web isn't very mature yet) i would recommend you just lern Dart.

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Yohnathan Carletti
Senior Technical Product Manager · | 3 upvotes · 214.5K views
Recommends
on
DartDart

From a management and hiring perspective, I recommend Flutter (Dart). It provides native solutions to both mobile platform ( (Android and IOS) while having the same knowledge. Hiring managers look at this as an advantage since a developer can provide solutions for both platforms whit the same knowledge. The Flutter framework is growing and there is a lot of resources to ground your knowledge and start experimenting. Dart is also a great language that covers most E2E necessities, so again, no further need of learning one language for FE and another for BE and services. It is my belief that Dart will surpass Kotlin soon, and will leverage to Python and Java in the upcoming year.

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Recommends
on
DartDart

If you are interested in Flutter, learn it on your own time, parallel to the course. No matter what order you do them, eventually you will end up learning them all anyway ;-)

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Decisions about Crystal and Dart
Lucas Litton
Founder & CEO at Macombey · | 8 upvotes · 248.5K views

JavaScript is at the forefront of our entire development approach. Not only do we use different JavaScript frameworks and management tools, but we also use pure vanilla JavaScript to solve simple problems throughout all of our client's builds. JavaScript is a general purpose programming language that can be blazing fast and fun to work with. There's not one project we are working on that doesn't involve it.

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Pros of Crystal
Pros of Dart
  • 38
    Compiles to efficient native code
  • 36
    Ruby inspired syntax
  • 32
    Performance oriented - C-like speeds
  • 23
    Gem-like packages, called Shards
  • 20
    Can call C code using Crystal bindings
  • 18
    Super Fast
  • 18
    Typed Ruby <3
  • 17
    Open Source
  • 14
    Minimal Runtime
  • 11
    Cute
  • 9
    Clean code
  • 9
    Concurrent
  • 9
    Productive
  • 4
    Great community
  • 2
    Feels like duck types, safe like static types
  • 2
    Null Safety
  • 2
    Type inference
  • 2
    Program compiled into a single binary
  • 2
    Powerful
  • 2
    Meta-Programming (via Macros)
  • 2
    Simplicity
  • 1
    Has builtin LLVM support library
  • 1
    Statically linked binaries that are simple to deploy
  • 1
    Fun to write
  • 1
    High-performance
  • 1
    Simple, minimal syntax
  • 1
    Compile time statically safe macros
  • 1
    Concise
  • 1
    Statically Safe Monkey Patching
  • 1
    Fibers
  • 1
    Spawn
  • 1
    Meta-programming
  • 1
    Cross-platform
  • 1
    Productivity
  • 1
    Elegant
  • 59
    Backed by Google
  • 53
    Flutter
  • 39
    Twice the speed of Javascript
  • 35
    Great tools
  • 30
    Scalable
  • 27
    Open source
  • 26
    Made for the future
  • 25
    Can be used on Frontend
  • 22
    Polymer Dart
  • 22
    Angular Dart
  • 18
    Cross platform
  • 16
    Like Java
  • 14
    Easy to learn
  • 13
    Dartanalyzer
  • 12
    Runs on Google Cloud Platform
  • 10
    Easy to Understand
  • 9
    Amazing concurrency primitives
  • 8
    Is to JS what C is to ASM
  • 7
    Flutter works with darts
  • 3
    R
  • 3
    Can run Dart in AWS Lambda
  • 1
    Looks familiar, with purposely implemented features

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Cons of Crystal
Cons of Dart
  • 13
    Small community
  • 3
    No windows support
  • 1
    No Oracle lib
  • 3
    Lack of ORM
  • 3
    Locked in - JS or TS interop is very hard to accomplish
  • 0
    A

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- No public GitHub repository available -

What is Crystal?

Crystal is a programming language that resembles Ruby but compiles to native code and tries to be much more efficient, at the cost of disallowing certain dynamic aspects of Ruby.

What is Dart?

Dart is a cohesive, scalable platform for building apps that run on the web (where you can use Polymer) or on servers (such as with Google Cloud Platform). Use the Dart language, libraries, and tools to write anything from simple scripts to full-featured apps.

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What are some alternatives to Crystal and Dart?
JavaScript
JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.
Python
Python is a general purpose programming language created by Guido Van Rossum. Python is most praised for its elegant syntax and readable code, if you are just beginning your programming career python suits you best.
HTML5
HTML5 is a core technology markup language of the Internet used for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web. As of October 2014 this is the final and complete fifth revision of the HTML standard of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The previous version, HTML 4, was standardised in 1997.
PHP
Fast, flexible and pragmatic, PHP powers everything from your blog to the most popular websites in the world.
Java
Java is a programming language and computing platform first released by Sun Microsystems in 1995. There are lots of applications and websites that will not work unless you have Java installed, and more are created every day. Java is fast, secure, and reliable. From laptops to datacenters, game consoles to scientific supercomputers, cell phones to the Internet, Java is everywhere!
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