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Reading the few comments here is really interesting. Every-time there is a discussion about Dart , people talk about Flutter... they very rarely talk about Dar

by wnsire 8y ago

Reading the few comments here is really interesting. Every-time there is a discussion about Dart , people talk about Flutter... they very rarely talk about Dart on the Server or on the Web... A while ago I considered using Dart to build a Web API. I was shocked by the non-existent ecosystem around this language. The Redis package has been un-maintained for almost three years now, and Angular Dart is always a few version behind the TypeScript version and doesn't support SSR. I was also very surprised that Google during dart conf never commented on using Dart on the server but instead always insisted on using it for their clients (Web and Mobile). I think I'm not lying by saying that a huge part of Google runs on JVM , Go or Python but definitely not on Dart VM. For me Dart is the language that developer needed , but never wanted to use. It failed miserably when it was introduced few years ago, since then JavaScript took off and has become almost a universal language. This is very frustrating seeing how much the language is efficient and well structured but it the same times doesn't mean much now seeing how mature JavaScript is becoming. For me Dart took long to become what is it now , and today the only thing that would make people using this language is really Flutter. Beside that , I'm afraid they are very little reason to use this language. [0]https://github.com/dartist/redis_client/tree/master https://github.com/dartist/redis_client/tree/master

k__ 8y ago
Flutter is probably the last attempt to get some Dart popularity. When Dart came out, Google build it to improve on JavaScript, by replacing it with a whole new language. Microsoft built TypeScript to integrate with JavaScript. I thought, "MS, right? Cobbling together some JS add-on, who will use that? Better get a whole now language that doesn't carry around that baggage from JS :D" I think Dart brought not enough new/better on the table, while having a worse JavaScript-interop than TypeScript. I mean it doesn't even have non-nullable types, which seems to be a standard feature in modern type-systems (Rust, Flow, TypeScript, Reason, etc.) My feeling is, some people will hype it a bit, because Flutter has a better architecture than alternatives like React-Native, but with projects like Fabric and Reason, nobody will care about it in a few years. But well, I also was wrong with my TypeScript prediction :D
- woolvalley 8y ago
  Fabric and reason have a native render target that doesn't involve browsers or wrapping some other UI library?
  - k__ 8y ago
    Fabric is the effort to make RN more competitive. And Reason is just another syntax for OCaml, so it can compile to everything OCaml can, that includes "native".
scarface74 8y ago
With Google’s history of abandoning efforts like this, I wouldn’t spend too much effort using any language developed by them.
- wnsire 8y ago
  > With Google’s history of abandoning efforts like this, I wouldn’t spend too much effort using any language developed by them. Well , to be fair Go is becoming a major server side language and I don't see Google abandoning it any time soon. That being said , Dart is basically on "life support" has of now , there is no SDK what so ever beside Google + Firebase , and I haven't heard anything from AWS / Azure or others vendors to support Dart + Flutter. I feel like everyone is basically waiting for the language to take off to actually invest in it. I'm afraid it will end up like Xamarin , a niche tech that will eventually die out because very little people accept the ecosystem that is forced on them by using the framework.
  - kasperpeulen 8y ago
    You don’t need more AWS support really. You can use any language that technology that AWS supports as the backend for a flutter app.
    - scarface74 8y ago
      Not if you want to use Lambda. You could write your own wrapper for the AWS API's for other use cases, but you could also repeatedly hit your head with a hammer.
  - ivm 8y ago
    Xamarin is not dead and being actively developed. It just doesn't intersect with the startup scene because of its enterprise roots.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    I wouldn’t focus my medium term career prospects on Xamarin, but if I could quickly ramp up and do mobile development using it, I would.
skybrian 8y ago
AngularDart is a hard fork. You shouldn't compare version numbers with original Angular since they are independent projects now.
- wnsire 8y ago
  I wasn't aware of this , thanks for the info. Nonetheless , the API seem to be behind the original. Hence interop with JavaScript seems incredibly messy and time consuming.
  - monyr75 8y ago
    Even the APIs are not necessarily related anymore. AngularDart is an entirely independent project in every way. I'm a long-time AngularDart dev, and the JS interop thing isn't as important as you'd think. For one thing, it's actually not that hard to do, and for another, you don't need to very often at all, since Dart covers so much of what external JS packages do.
sbjs 8y ago
I think what killed Dart is that they emphasized their plans to make Dart a first-class scripting language of Chrome, so that you could use <script type="text/dart"> instead of JavaScript. This had a lot of backlash from literally everyone, I think mostly because they were bit too hard by IE doing the exact same thing just a few years before. Only after a few years the Dart team changed courses and said "never mind about that VM-inside-Chrome thing, we're just going to compile to JS like everyone else" but it was too late and nobody cared about Dart anymore and all the excitement and enthusiasm was gone. I think people don't realize just how much excitement and enthusiasm from a potential community makes or breaks a project when it's first announced.
- pcwalton 8y ago
  > I think mostly because they were bit too hard by IE doing the exact same thing just a few years before. It's pretty simple, in my view: JS developers were happy with the language and didn't want a browser vendor trying to replace it. Remember that it was announced around the time that the new ES6 ("Harmony") features were generating a lot of excitement about the future of JS.
  - sbjs 8y ago
    I think Dart started internal development around the same time CoffeeScript gained major popularity and brought attention to JS's desperate need to evolve, but they released at a bad time: when JS finally did start to evolve (as Harmony) which was a reaction to CoffeeScript in the first place. So CoffeeScript served its purpose of pushing JS forward, and most other compile-to-JS languages had no more purpose. I say most because some serve a different purpose than just being a slightly nicer JS, like how Elm piggy-backs on the familiarity of Haskell and provides a niche no-mutation environment, and TypeScript adds type-checking for those of us who can't write code as confidently without it. But the rest served their purpose, and Dart's dream of having its own VM inside Chrome was probably what killed it so quickly.
    - nailer 8y ago
      If Google had paved some cowpaths: - CoffeeScript was hugely popular at the time - it was even mandatory at GitHub to make new applications in CS not JS - Typescript was immediately well recieved. JS folk liked optional typing. - Ruby was popular amongst the web community Google would have done a lot better than making a new road and wondering why there's nobody on it.
Keyframe 8y ago
Well, google itself calls it now 'a client-optimized language' and product manager of Dart is also a product manager of Flutter at the same time, brought in from Microsoft. Tells you everything you need to know where they're aiming - where React (Native) is. The farm is bet on Flutter's success now, it seems.
Daegalus 8y ago
I was a backend/cli developer for Dart, most of us were ignored when we asked for support in helping build out the Node.js aspect of Dart. So many left. I still maintain my few libraries but I lost of a lot of interest when they went full throttle on frontend only until it failed. I hope Flutter restores some popularity. If it does, those libraries will start getting updated.
Sophistifunk 8y ago
It just doesn't provide enough value over Flow or TypeScript for most people. I'd love to use Flutter, but the tools I want to build I need to be desktop apps. Not everybody is focused on the app store gold rush.
devxpy 8y ago
Did you stop to think that the reason you like dart so much is that you're coming from javascript? JS is not a real language, coming from python.

by wnsire 8y ago

k__ 8y ago

Flutter is probably the last attempt to get some Dart popularity. When Dart came out, Google build it to improve on JavaScript, by replacing it with a whole new language. Microsoft built TypeScript to integrate with JavaScript. I thought, "MS, right? Cobbling together some JS add-on, who will use that? Better get a whole now language that doesn't carry around that baggage from JS :D" I think Dart brought not enough new/better on the table, while having a worse JavaScript-interop than TypeScript. I mean it doesn't even have non-nullable types, which seems to be a standard feature in modern type-systems (Rust, Flow, TypeScript, Reason, etc.) My feeling is, some people will hype it a bit, because Flutter has a better architecture than alternatives like React-Native, but with projects like Fabric and Reason, nobody will care about it in a few years. But well, I also was wrong with my TypeScript prediction :D

woolvalley 8y ago
Fabric and reason have a native render target that doesn't involve browsers or wrapping some other UI library?
- k__ 8y ago
  Fabric is the effort to make RN more competitive. And Reason is just another syntax for OCaml, so it can compile to everything OCaml can, that includes "native".

scarface74 8y ago

With Google’s history of abandoning efforts like this, I wouldn’t spend too much effort using any language developed by them.

wnsire 8y ago
> With Google’s history of abandoning efforts like this, I wouldn’t spend too much effort using any language developed by them. Well , to be fair Go is becoming a major server side language and I don't see Google abandoning it any time soon. That being said , Dart is basically on "life support" has of now , there is no SDK what so ever beside Google + Firebase , and I haven't heard anything from AWS / Azure or others vendors to support Dart + Flutter. I feel like everyone is basically waiting for the language to take off to actually invest in it. I'm afraid it will end up like Xamarin , a niche tech that will eventually die out because very little people accept the ecosystem that is forced on them by using the framework.
- kasperpeulen 8y ago
  You don’t need more AWS support really. You can use any language that technology that AWS supports as the backend for a flutter app.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    Not if you want to use Lambda. You could write your own wrapper for the AWS API's for other use cases, but you could also repeatedly hit your head with a hammer.
- ivm 8y ago
  Xamarin is not dead and being actively developed. It just doesn't intersect with the startup scene because of its enterprise roots.
- scarface74 8y ago
  I wouldn’t focus my medium term career prospects on Xamarin, but if I could quickly ramp up and do mobile development using it, I would.

skybrian 8y ago

AngularDart is a hard fork. You shouldn't compare version numbers with original Angular since they are independent projects now.

wnsire 8y ago
I wasn't aware of this , thanks for the info. Nonetheless , the API seem to be behind the original. Hence interop with JavaScript seems incredibly messy and time consuming.
- monyr75 8y ago
  Even the APIs are not necessarily related anymore. AngularDart is an entirely independent project in every way. I'm a long-time AngularDart dev, and the JS interop thing isn't as important as you'd think. For one thing, it's actually not that hard to do, and for another, you don't need to very often at all, since Dart covers so much of what external JS packages do.

sbjs 8y ago

I think what killed Dart is that they emphasized their plans to make Dart a first-class scripting language of Chrome, so that you could use <script type="text/dart"> instead of JavaScript. This had a lot of backlash from literally everyone, I think mostly because they were bit too hard by IE doing the exact same thing just a few years before. Only after a few years the Dart team changed courses and said "never mind about that VM-inside-Chrome thing, we're just going to compile to JS like everyone else" but it was too late and nobody cared about Dart anymore and all the excitement and enthusiasm was gone. I think people don't realize just how much excitement and enthusiasm from a potential community makes or breaks a project when it's first announced.

pcwalton 8y ago
> I think mostly because they were bit too hard by IE doing the exact same thing just a few years before. It's pretty simple, in my view: JS developers were happy with the language and didn't want a browser vendor trying to replace it. Remember that it was announced around the time that the new ES6 ("Harmony") features were generating a lot of excitement about the future of JS.
- sbjs 8y ago
  I think Dart started internal development around the same time CoffeeScript gained major popularity and brought attention to JS's desperate need to evolve, but they released at a bad time: when JS finally did start to evolve (as Harmony) which was a reaction to CoffeeScript in the first place. So CoffeeScript served its purpose of pushing JS forward, and most other compile-to-JS languages had no more purpose. I say most because some serve a different purpose than just being a slightly nicer JS, like how Elm piggy-backs on the familiarity of Haskell and provides a niche no-mutation environment, and TypeScript adds type-checking for those of us who can't write code as confidently without it. But the rest served their purpose, and Dart's dream of having its own VM inside Chrome was probably what killed it so quickly.
  - nailer 8y ago
    If Google had paved some cowpaths: - CoffeeScript was hugely popular at the time - it was even mandatory at GitHub to make new applications in CS not JS - Typescript was immediately well recieved. JS folk liked optional typing. - Ruby was popular amongst the web community Google would have done a lot better than making a new road and wondering why there's nobody on it.

Keyframe 8y ago

Well, google itself calls it now 'a client-optimized language' and product manager of Dart is also a product manager of Flutter at the same time, brought in from Microsoft. Tells you everything you need to know where they're aiming - where React (Native) is. The farm is bet on Flutter's success now, it seems.

Daegalus 8y ago

I was a backend/cli developer for Dart, most of us were ignored when we asked for support in helping build out the Node.js aspect of Dart. So many left. I still maintain my few libraries but I lost of a lot of interest when they went full throttle on frontend only until it failed. I hope Flutter restores some popularity. If it does, those libraries will start getting updated.

Sophistifunk 8y ago

It just doesn't provide enough value over Flow or TypeScript for most people. I'd love to use Flutter, but the tools I want to build I need to be desktop apps. Not everybody is focused on the app store gold rush.

devxpy 8y ago

Did you stop to think that the reason you like dart so much is that you're coming from javascript? JS is not a real language, coming from python.