At its heart, Dart is a conservative programming language. It was not designed to champion bold new ideas, but rather to create a predictable and stable programming environment. The language was created at Google in 2011, with the goal of unseating JavaScript as the language of the web.

JavaScript is a very flexible language, but its lack of a type system and misleadingly simple grammar can make projects very difficult to manage as they grow. Dart aimed to fix this by finding a halfway point between the dynamic nature of JavaScript and the class-based designs of Java and other object-oriented languages. The language uses a syntax that will be immediately familiar to any developer who already knows a C-style language.

This chapter also assumes that Dart is not your first programming language. Consequently, we will be skipping the parts of the Dart language where the syntax is the same as any other C-style language. You will not find anything in this chapter about loops, if statements, and switch statements; they aren't any different here from how they are treated in other languages you already know. Instead, we will focus on the aspects of the Dart language that make it unique.

In this chapter, we will cover the following recipes, all of which will function as a primer on Dart:

Declaring variables – var versus final versus const
Strings and string interpolation
How to write functions
How to use functions as variables with closures
Creating classes and using the class constructor shorthand
Defining abstract classes
Implementing generics
How to group and manipulate data with collections
Writing less code with higher-order functions
Using the cascade operator to implement the builder pattern
Understanding Dart Null Safety

If you are already aware of how to develop in Dart, feel free to skip this chapter. We will be focusing exclusively on the language here and will then cover Flutter in detail in the next chapter.

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ADITYA Aug 09, 2021

One of the best resource for anything looking and learn flutter as well as sharpen their skills. Everything is intuitive and easy to understand. I highly recommend this book to beginners and also to experienced individuals

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Rachana Sep 21, 2021

Highly recommended book for flutter users The book is updated and the very latest version. It covers everything, its one of the first full fledged book that covers each and everything in detail. Its for anyone who has just started flutter and is looking for guide form basics.

paulsm Oct 24, 2021

Anyone interested in developing Flutter applications for Android or iOS should have a copy of this book on their desk. It has 100s of great examples. But more importantly, the authors explain the "whys" for behind each of the features they discuss. The materials are completely up-to-date. The audience is everybody from a "beginner" to "experienced developers": the only prerequisite is having some familiarity with at least one object-oriented programming language (like C#, Java or Python, among others).If you're interested in Flutter - or even if you've already developed a few Flutter apps - I can't recommend this book highly enough.

Antonio Aguilar Nov 04, 2021

This book isn't like many of your "cookbook" style programming books which assume some level of understanding of the programming language. This books is designed for beginners who don't know any dart/flutter, and teaches you with robust code examples (unlike many books that only show you a snippet and expect you to follow along somehow without the greater context). That makes it pretty thick as half or more of the pages are just code, but it's worth the bulk for sure. At almost half way through I've found a few minor errors in the code but overall this book is one of the best I've read for learning a new language.

abby1999 Aug 17, 2021

I can wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone wanting to pick up not JUST Flutter, but also the fundamentals of dart, working with Firebase, MLKit, and SO much more.What really impresses me is that Simone has even taken time to go deep into software architecture and design fundamentals (model view patterns, proper state management and so on), and personalized it to the Flutter/Dart paradigm. He covers everything from setting the Flutter kit up on your PC, to deploying Flutter apps, packages, websites and more.The bottom line is, if you're looking for a one stop solution for all your Flutter learning needs, THIS IS IT.Thanks for the amazing work put into this, Simone, and everyone else who contributed to it.

Flutter Cookbook: Over 100 proven techniques and solutions for app development with Flutter 2.2 and Dart

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