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I see the need for javascript replacement, and Dart is a valid attempt at that. What I can't see is rationale in inventing yet another language, when there are

I see the need for javascript replacement, and Dart is a valid attempt at that. What I can't see is rationale in inventing yet another language, when there are alternatives that already exist, have decent user base, and could be a good fit (see Lua, Ruby, Mirah, Coffescript). Someone on the Clojure mailing list said that the best thing would be if VM/Runtime that will run Dart on non Chrome browsers could be reused/repurposed to run alternative languages like Coffescript or Clojurescript, it would be best possible solution.

masklinn 15y ago
> What I can't see is rationale in inventing yet another language I can see that, if it's a significant improvement on the previous language for the user base. That's not the case for Dart, I see a lot of truth in the quips "puts the Java back into Javascript" and "Takes a hard turn towards going back to more machine-friendly and less developer-friendly languages". New languages are a fine thing, but Dart is neither original nor interesting, it's mostly shoving back a heap-ful of Java into Javascript and calling it a day, that's not helpful. Some sort of web IR all web languages could compile to would be useful (especially with broad support from other browser vendors), a chopped down Javascript with its problems fixed (JS 1.7's `let` instead of current `var`, "strict-mode" by default, structural types, typed object keys, an actual integer type) would be helpful, a "best subset" of Harmony would be helpful, Harmony itself would be helpful, a brand new language with PL concepts less than 30 years old would be helpful, but from what I've seen so far Dart is none of these.
vf 15y ago
What need is it you see exactly?