Dart is no longer just for beautiful UIs—it's a powerful, performant language for backend development too. In this session, you'll discover how Dart Frog, the lightweight and modern backend framework from Very Good Ventures, lets Flutter developers build scalable server-side applications using the same language they already love.

We'll start with the basics: setting up a Dart Frog project, defining routes, handling requests/responses, middleware, and dependency injection. Then we'll dive deeper into real-world patterns, building RESTful APIs, integrating databases (e.g., PostgreSQL via Prisma or Drift), implementing authentication, handling errors, and deploying to production (Globe, Docker, etc.).

Through live coding and a practical full-stack example (a Task API connected to a Flutter frontend), you'll see how Dart Frog enables true code-sharing across client and server, reduces context-switching, and leverages Dart's strong typing, async/await, and AOT compilation for fast, reliable backends.

Whether you're a Flutter dev curious about backend, tired of polyglot stacks, or looking to unify your full-stack workflow in pure Dart, this talk will equip you to add server-side capabilities to your projects confidently.

This talk draws directly from my recently released comprehensive YouTube course on Dart Frog (@techwithsam), where I cover everything from setup to advanced features and deployment.

Key Takeaways / Learning Points:
1. Set up and structure a production-grade Dart Frog application, including routing, middleware, and dependency management, ready for real-world use.
2. Build RESTful APIs with request validation, error handling, and JSON serialization, plus integrate persistent storage (e.g., databases) for full CRUD operations.
3. Implement authentication (JWT or similar) and security best practices to protect server endpoints in Dart backends.
4. Deploy Dart Frog apps efficiently to cloud platforms, understanding AOT compilation benefits for performance and cold-start times compared to traditional Node.js/Python backends.
5. Enable true full-stack Dart development by connecting your Dart Frog backend to a Flutter frontend, including code-sharing opportunities and reduced maintenance overhead.