ChromeDevelopers: Dart, Flutter, and WasmGC with Ömer Ağacan and Martin Kustermann

Author: Chrome for Developers - Bewertung: 9x - Views:116

In this episode of WasmAssembly, your host Thomas Steiner is joined by Ömer Ağacan and Martin Kustermann from the Dart team at Google. They explore Dart, the language behind Flutter, and how Dart nearly landed in V8 alongside JavaScript, and why Flutter doubled down on Dart and WebAssembly Garbage Collection (WasmGC). Ömer and Martin then share insights on Dart’s performance leap from dart2js to dart2wasm, its potential beyond the browser, and what the WasmGC transition means for developers and the broader ecosystem. Finally, they look at Jaspr, Dart-only web apps, and how different browsers are handling WasmGC. This episode again is packed with sharp technical detail and bold visions for the future of WebAssembly.



Chapters:

0:00 - Introducing Ömer and Martin from the Dart team

0:38 - What even is Dart?

3:58 - How V8 almost supported JavaScript and Dart

7:34 - What is Flutter, and why did they choose Dart?

10:21 - Flutter’s three Google I/O moments: Accessibility, hot reloading, and WasmGC

12:37 - Why Flutter bet on WasmGC

16:54 - Were Flutter people part of the WasmGC proposal?

17:37 - How the Flutter and the Dart team collaborate at Google

19:48 - WasmGC explained

23:10 - WasmGC outside of the browser without the JS engineer’s garbage collector

24:01 - Performance impact of switching from dart2js to dart2wasm

26:11 - Web apps with pure Dart

28:48 - Reasons for choosing Dart for Web programming

36:14 - Size differences between Dart compiled to JS vs. Wasm

38:55 - Web apps with Jaspr

41:13 - Dart compiled to WasmGC on non-browser engines

43:01 - WasmGC in the various browsers

46:44 - WasmGC, ready for business adaptation?

48:57 - Concrete problems in different browsers

52:30 - WasmGC in browser benchmarks

54:06 - Ömer’s and Martin’s wishes for the Wasm ecosystem

1:00:00 - Wasm, but not

1:03:26 - How to reach Ömer and Martin



Resources:

Dart → https://goo.gle/4kfijgD

Flutter → https://goo.gle/4kh4jDi

Before Flutter | Rubber Duck Engineering | Episode #100 → https://goo.gle/4nujV9g

State of Developer Ecosystem Report → https://goo.gle/4lrmya6

What's new in Flutter → https://goo.gle/44xx0Gl

Dart & Flutter momentum at Google I/O 2025 → https://goo.gle/3TgUr1p

Accessibility in Flutter on the Web → https://goo.gle/4l2xfQB

Stateful hot reload in DartPad → https://goo.gle/4nokFg1

WebAssembly (Wasm) compilation → https://goo.gle/3I8Ngpx

Support for WebAssembly (Wasm) → https://goo.gle/45L0wdR

WebAssembly Garbage Collection (WasmGC) now enabled by default in Chrome → https://goo.gle/3G7qLAS

Wasm-feature-detect library → https://goo.gle/4evqS5Y

A new way to bring garbage collected programming languages efficiently to WebAssembly → https://goo.gle/4keW0rt

[dart2wasm] Support non-JS wasm runtimes → https://goo.gle/44wr3t3

Safari bug: Umbrella: Using Canvas image sources between different canvases and canvas types is slow → https://goo.gle/3TmuSvM

Firefox bug: OffscreenCanvas.transferToImageBitmap incurs a copy → https://goo.gle/3GoIGD2

Ömer Ağacan on LinkedIn → https://goo.gle/4lA6fYB

Martin Kustermann on LinkedIn → https://goo.gle/3TffQbc



Watch more WasmAssembly → https://goo.gle/WasmAssembly

Subscribe to Chrome for Developers → https://goo.gle/ChromeDevs



#WebAssembly #Wasm #WasmGC #Flutter #Dart #Dart2JS #Dart2Wasm #Dart2WasmGC #ChromeForDevelopers #Chrome



Speaker: Thomas Steiner

Products Mentioned: Web Assembly (Wasm), Chrome, WebAssembly for Chrome