You can't do List<byte>, but need to use special types like Uint8List. This was not always available, so List<int> is sometimes still used even in official Goog

You can't do List<byte>, but need to use special types like Uint8List. This was not always available, so List<int> is sometimes still used even in official Google libraries. If it had value types you wouldn't need these special lists. I agree that overall it feels like C#-lite, plus some baggage from early days when it was designed as an alternative to JS. It will probably become really nice language in a few years.