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How would you characterize the positioning of Dart with respect to Go? Dart is for client-side, Go is for server-side? I'm also curious if you see having separa

by darzu 8y ago

How would you characterize the positioning of Dart with respect to Go? Dart is for client-side, Go is for server-side? I'm also curious if you see having separate languages for these roles as desirable or just incidental.

isoos 8y ago
Disclaimer: I've been working with Dart for 5+ years now, I'm running several small server-side Dart apps myself, and I also contribute to the Dart app that is behind pub.dartlang.org The Dart VM itself is great for server-side, however Google is focusing on the mobile and web tooling and support. While they do develop server-side packages e.g. for AppEngine-, gRPC-, or Memcache-support, connecting to databases like Postgresql is through a community-supported package, and sometimes it is hard to find an actively developed one. Considering these limits, there are still good server-side frameworks, and there exists couple of big full-stack Dart applications. I've created a HackerNews-crawler twitter-bot (@DartHype) in a matter of hours in Dart, and it is running almost unchanged since then. Not that it is a big feat, but it was an easy thing to implement given the ecosystem. If you have a fresh project, and you can select your database and other parts of your stack, Dart can be a good choice. Depending on the domain, the performance is close to the one in Go, or in Java VM, and it is much easier for beginner to pick up than other languages, while the tooling provides more safety than JavaScript or TypeScript. However, if you need to connect to Sybase, it may not be the best choice.
- hliyan 8y ago
  I've recently started taking Dart seriously. Could you point me toward a good community / community resources? The official documentation seems a bet sparse...
- TheAceOfHearts 8y ago
  The Dart community is tiny and package selection is incredibly limited. I'd argue that Dart would be a very poor choice for most developers. It's not easier to pick up than something like Rails or even Spring.
  - isoos 8y ago
    Your argument is noted, we just happen to disagree. I've mentored high school students for a couple of weekends to help them build their mobile app. Java (Android): struggle with the bloat. JavaScript (React Native): shoot themselves in the foot couple of times - lack of tooling. Dart (and Flutter): instant success. The language, its consistent API, the IDE and tooling support with the static analysis is just great for beginners and advanced developers alike. People like to hate Dart because it threatened to take away their beloved JavaScript. For those who have actually tried in the past few years, I only hear they wish their IT stack could be migrated to Dart. If you start a new project, choose wisely :)
munificent 8y ago
> How would you characterize the positioning of Dart with respect to Go? I think it's easy to over-estimate how much "positioning" Google actually does with projects like this. We are a very big company and different parts work fairly independently of each other. Your description is how I think of the two languages, but you might get different answers from different people. I like classes and object-oriented programming in general, and I think it's a fantastic fit for UI applications. So I think Dart is an easier fit for that domain. Meanwhile, Go's concurrency model and nice standard library seem to be a good fit for servers. Given the breadth of software people write today, I think there's plenty of room in the world for lots of languages.

by darzu 8y ago

isoos 8y ago

Disclaimer: I've been working with Dart for 5+ years now, I'm running several small server-side Dart apps myself, and I also contribute to the Dart app that is behind pub.dartlang.org The Dart VM itself is great for server-side, however Google is focusing on the mobile and web tooling and support. While they do develop server-side packages e.g. for AppEngine-, gRPC-, or Memcache-support, connecting to databases like Postgresql is through a community-supported package, and sometimes it is hard to find an actively developed one. Considering these limits, there are still good server-side frameworks, and there exists couple of big full-stack Dart applications. I've created a HackerNews-crawler twitter-bot (@DartHype) in a matter of hours in Dart, and it is running almost unchanged since then. Not that it is a big feat, but it was an easy thing to implement given the ecosystem. If you have a fresh project, and you can select your database and other parts of your stack, Dart can be a good choice. Depending on the domain, the performance is close to the one in Go, or in Java VM, and it is much easier for beginner to pick up than other languages, while the tooling provides more safety than JavaScript or TypeScript. However, if you need to connect to Sybase, it may not be the best choice.

hliyan 8y ago
I've recently started taking Dart seriously. Could you point me toward a good community / community resources? The official documentation seems a bet sparse...
TheAceOfHearts 8y ago
The Dart community is tiny and package selection is incredibly limited. I'd argue that Dart would be a very poor choice for most developers. It's not easier to pick up than something like Rails or even Spring.
- isoos 8y ago
  Your argument is noted, we just happen to disagree. I've mentored high school students for a couple of weekends to help them build their mobile app. Java (Android): struggle with the bloat. JavaScript (React Native): shoot themselves in the foot couple of times - lack of tooling. Dart (and Flutter): instant success. The language, its consistent API, the IDE and tooling support with the static analysis is just great for beginners and advanced developers alike. People like to hate Dart because it threatened to take away their beloved JavaScript. For those who have actually tried in the past few years, I only hear they wish their IT stack could be migrated to Dart. If you start a new project, choose wisely :)

munificent 8y ago

> How would you characterize the positioning of Dart with respect to Go? I think it's easy to over-estimate how much "positioning" Google actually does with projects like this. We are a very big company and different parts work fairly independently of each other. Your description is how I think of the two languages, but you might get different answers from different people. I like classes and object-oriented programming in general, and I think it's a fantastic fit for UI applications. So I think Dart is an easier fit for that domain. Meanwhile, Go's concurrency model and nice standard library seem to be a good fit for servers. Given the breadth of software people write today, I think there's plenty of room in the world for lots of languages.