Over 1000 Followers 🎉 I'll take that as a good sign

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This was all possible because of you 🙌🏾

I am well pleased with this milestone, all thanks to you the reader. It has been encouraging to see support and engaging in conversations with some of you about Dart.

How it started

My journey began around mid-2013 while learning object-oriented programming. I came across Dart and was able to pick it up relatively quickly. Having programmed in a procedural manner in the role before, Dart's traditional approach helped me grasp the concept a lot quicker. During that time types were optional, which allowed me to write in a non-typed style while overlaying types as and when needed. I trusted Dart even more after learning that its also an ECMA standard.

As time went on, the seeming lack of interest from Google in promoting it pushed me away. Also ES6 was gaining interest, partly because it was implementing features inspired by other languages, like classes and data types like Set and Map. This increased JavaScript's appeal for most of us. I rarely thought about Dart till late 2017 when I saw Google's earlier presentation on Flutter, which was called Sky then. This got my attention but didn't take any further action.

So earlier this year I decided to look into Dart again after reports singing Flutter's praises flooded the interwebs. I was really impressed with the language changes and especially the improvements to the tooling for clientside development. I was glad to see that the team took the initiative to improve the JS output it produced, as that was one of the main pain points working with Dart.

Blogging strategy

Having decided to take blogging serious again, my strategy was to pick a topic that I felt was niche and contribute to it.

This proved difficult partly because I had experienced JavaScript fatigue and just couldn't navigate my way to what I wanted to write about.

So having looked at the improvements Dart made, it hit me..."What if I could demonstrate how the usual tutorials on app development with Node + Express + MongoDB or todo app with framework xyz.js could be done in Dart?" I mean, Dart can be used for client as well as serverside apps. The topic may not be unique, but it expands the knowledgebase of an ecosystem that isn't overly saturated with predictable content :)

I took the plunge by writing my first "Darticle", tying the success of Flutter to Dart, after one of the guys on the Medium ITNEXT publication reached out to me. I followed that up with a series on Building RESTful Web APIs with Dart, Aqueduct, and PostgreSQL, which was well-received and the Aqueduct team even reached out with some goodies.

This led to a fun and challenging couple of months affirming my allegiance to the Dart side. I wasn't sure what the response would be, but it was a risk worth taking for I saw it's potential. I understood that I would be going against the flow in writing about an ecosystem that failed to gain traction in the past. But then most success stories are preceeded by a boat load of failures. I'm happy now that I took this risk. Had I not done that, I would not be writing this post.

I've encountered other opportunites ever since, like being accepted as an instructor on Egghead and a potential collaboration with a publishing company(more on that later #notgonnajinxit).

So what now?

I continue blogging and exploring Dart. Some say Dart is dead, but it's still alive and kicking. The reddit community is growing as well as the slowly increasing number of pull requests on github. This is not to suggest that it'll reach number 1. However, I think Dart is worth exploring and I don't see the harm in a Dart plus Python or JavaScript or [insert language here] combo.

Here are 3 of my favourite Darticles. I'd recommend checking these out if you haven't already: