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One of the things that always surprises me about Dart is that Google continued to invest in it for so long without any real returns until fairly recently. Dart

One of the things that always surprises me about Dart is that Google continued to invest in it for so long without any real returns until fairly recently. Dart came out in 2012 and to my knowledge had basically no usage for several years. Flutter came out in 2017, and then it took a decent amount of time to start picking up steam. Very uncharacteristic of Google to invest in something like Dart for 7+ years before it really started seeing any returns on the investment.

klodolph 5y ago
There are various theories along the lines of "principal engineer retention strategy", where part of the reason for these projects (and I have to emphasize "part" in "part of the reason") is because they are the pet projects of some particular individual at Google who can deliver tons of value to the company other ways, and who might leave if they don't get to work on their pet projects. I have definitely heard stories of people at companies like Google and Facebook who have done things in their career that saved or made the company enormous amounts of money in one fell swoop, people who can help get massive projects back on track or solve thorny resource usage problems. The theory is that if they've done it a couple times in the past, you do what it takes to keep them around because they'll probably do it again in the future. These people generally get positions crafted for them, and sometimes teams.
dustymcp 5y ago
I think it was used internally with Google and probably why they kept it going?
Hixie 5y ago
It was (and still is) heavily used by Google Ads internally. Dart literally powers the vast majority of Google's income, and has for years.
pjmlp 5y ago
Google Ads had just switched away from GWT into Dart, when Chrome team decided to give up on Dart. They just weren't going to go through yet another rewrite and thus kept the team going. Notice that almost everyone involved with Dart 1.0 is no longer around.

klodolph 5y ago

There are various theories along the lines of "principal engineer retention strategy", where part of the reason for these projects (and I have to emphasize "part" in "part of the reason") is because they are the pet projects of some particular individual at Google who can deliver tons of value to the company other ways, and who might leave if they don't get to work on their pet projects. I have definitely heard stories of people at companies like Google and Facebook who have done things in their career that saved or made the company enormous amounts of money in one fell swoop, people who can help get massive projects back on track or solve thorny resource usage problems. The theory is that if they've done it a couple times in the past, you do what it takes to keep them around because they'll probably do it again in the future. These people generally get positions crafted for them, and sometimes teams.

dustymcp 5y ago

I think it was used internally with Google and probably why they kept it going?

Hixie 5y ago

It was (and still is) heavily used by Google Ads internally. Dart literally powers the vast majority of Google's income, and has for years.

pjmlp 5y ago

Google Ads had just switched away from GWT into Dart, when Chrome team decided to give up on Dart. They just weren't going to go through yet another rewrite and thus kept the team going. Notice that almost everyone involved with Dart 1.0 is no longer around.