Google unveiled Dart in 2011 as a programming language for client-side web and mobile development.
The language was designed at Google, with Lars Bak and Kasper Lund among its key creators. Dart aimed to provide a structured alternative to JavaScript for large web applications, while also supporting compilation to JavaScript.
Dart later became closely associated with Flutter, Google's UI toolkit for building applications from a shared codebase. Dart is sometimes confused with Java, JavaScript, or TypeScript because of its C-style syntax, but it is a separate language with its own virtual machine and tooling.
Dart 2, released in 2018, emphasized strong typing and modern application development. The language remains especially visible through Flutter, although its original design also targeted browser applications.