Dart is a programming language designed by Lars Bak and Kasper Lund and developed by Google, first unveiled in October 2011 at the GOTO conference in Aarhus, Denmark. It was created to address the limitations of JavaScript for building complex web applications by offering a faster, more structured, and scalable alternative. Dart is an object-oriented, class-based language with C-style syntax that supports features such as interfaces, mixins, abstract classes, generics, and type inference[1][2][3]. Initially, Dart aimed to become a direct competitor to JavaScript by running in browsers via its own virtual machine, including a specialized Chromium fork called Dartium. However, these plans were eventually abandoned in favor of compiling Dart code to JavaScript, ensuring compatibility across all browsers[2][3]. Dart 1.0 was released in November 2013, with significant improvements in performance and tooling over the early versions. A major turning point for Dart’s adoption came with the introduction of Flutter in 2015, Google's UI toolkit for building natively compiled applications across mobile, web, and desktop from a single codebase. Flutter relies on Dart for its fast performance, hot reload capabilities, and developer productivity enhancements, which have significantly boosted Dart’s popularity and relevance in cross-platform app development[2][4]. Dart continues to evolve, with its latest stable version (3.10.3 as of 2025) supporting sound null safety, records, patterns, class modifiers, and compilation to machine code, JavaScript, and WebAssembly. The language is standardized by ECMA International (ECMA-408) and remains an open-source project focused on simplifying development without sacrificing execution speed or scalability[3][4]. In summary, Dart is a versatile, modern programming language primarily known for its integral role in Flutter, making it a key technology for efficient, scalable app development across platforms.