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There might not be a formalized 'grand plan,' but Dart doesn't have the open, cheerful intentions of CoffeeScript. It's being designed as a javascript replacem

There might not be a formalized 'grand plan,' but Dart doesn't have the open, cheerful intentions of CoffeeScript. It's being designed as a javascript replacement. Google's overbearing intention is obvious. You're right: Dart is, functionally, another CoffeeScript, but that's despite Google's plan--ok, 'experiment'--not by design. >So, please, can we discuss this on its merits Your criticisms are shared. That's what causes the friction: resentment that a pretty flawed language is being pushed. Dart does take time away from other more worthwhile projects. None of the cynicism is over wishing that Google would stop experimenting with technology, it's over Google's waste of time. Edit: Actually, apparently there might be a formalized 'grand plan,' reading nateabele.

spankalee 13y ago
What are "open, cheerful intentions"? Open? Dart has been open-sourced for 2 years now - only having its proof-of-concept done in-house before the announcement. Cheerful? Not sure how one language that compiles to JS is more "cheerful" than an other, but we're really a cheerful bunch in person. I'm sure you could have a beer with us if you'd like :) As to the your and the OP's point about Dart being another CoffeeScript, this is really far from reality. CoffeeScript is just syntax changes, and that's not sufficient for fixing JavaScript major problems - which come form its semantics, not it's syntax. Dart and CoffeeScript are actually quite far apart on the spectrum of compile-to-JS languages: Dart tries to keep a similar syntax and fix the semantics, CoffeeScript tries to keep the semantics and "fix" the syntax (I personally find CoffeeScript very hard to read). Claiming that Dart is another CoffeeScript, to me, shows a real lack of knowledge about one or both of the languages.
- Helianthus 13y ago
  ... I was talking ecosystem niche and I think that obvious. Both languages have to compile to javascript to run in the browser, and it's going to stay that way. You might not be involved enough in the politics of programmer mindshare, but plainly: Dart is attempting a takeover. Takeovers can be smiles and open source, but they're still takeovers, and this one is doomed to fail. If you don't see that, you're focused on the work in front of you and (again) not on the politics of technology. Which is fine. I'm sure it would be lovely to have a beer with you, and talk languages and compiler design well into the next day's hangover. But if you're going to get involved with a conversation on politics, you should think about Google's goals with Dart and whether they're reasonable or beneficial. General sentiment here? They're neither.
  - spankalee 13y ago
    No one is forcing anyone to use Dart, anymore than people are forced to use CoffeeScript, Haxe or pyjamas. Many engineers at Google want a sane alternative to JavaScript, and we think it'll save thousands of hours of developer time, millions of developer dollars, and also _user_ time and money as they benefit from more stable apps with more features. JavaScript is not going anyway. If developers flock to Dart, presumably we've offered something beneficial to them. I joined the Dart team because I thought is was a worthy and important project that could beneficially impact a very large number of people. I _do_ think about these things, they're quite important to me. The goals of more sane semantics, more optimizable structure, and better toolability and tools are to me, and a lot of other engineers, incredibly reasonable and beneficial. That's actually the entire point of the project is to be more reasonable and beneficial than the alternatives :) If fact, I think I'll use that as my informal Dart tagline: "Dart, reasonable and beneficial!" More seriously, Dart is created by people who think that JS is broken and we need an alternative. I hope you're not claiming that that's really an unreasonable opinion, and that the only reasonable point of view is that JavaScript should always be the only language used to develop web applications. I'm sure reasonable people can disagree about the degree of brokenness of JavaScript, and about different solutions to the problems.
    - Helianthus 13y ago
      I'm aware of JS language angst, yes. Developers aren't flocking to Dart. Many are resentful of it. You can ignore the resentment and the reasoning behind it if you want, but that won't make Dart more reasonable or beneficial.
      - detst 13y ago
        > reasoning behind it In all of your condescending[1] comments, you have forgotten to actually articulate what your reasoning is. These are as close as you got: Dart doesn't have the open, cheerful intentions Google's overbearing intention is obvious flawed language this one is doomed to fail forced down our throat [1] I'll Identify these on request. They're unwarranted, counter-productive and rude.
- aroman 13y ago
  I think his point — and I tend to agree with it, accurate or not — was that there is an inherent distrust that comes with a project "sponsored" by a large black box (in this case, Google). Google doesn't exactly have a great track record of supporting things forever, or even keeping their "open source" systems as open as possible[1]. So, people are naturally suspicious. CoffeeScript doesn't have this vibe, to me at least. It's made by a team of people across companies (although I think it is sponsored partially by The New York Times Company?) and there is a lot of community which lives outside a specific company's ecosystem. That said, it could just be my own personal bias, having used coffee script extensively and not used Dart much at all. [1] http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/11/google-just-pulled-a-facebook-home-kitkats-primary-interface-is-google-search/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/11/google-just-pulled-a-...
- xixixao 13y ago
  There is one major difference between Dart and CoffeeScript: The Angular team didn't have to take a 3 month holiday to make Angular work with CoffeeScript. If Dart was just another compile-to-JS language, then they wouldn't have to bother at all. Yet, CoffeeScript is not just a different syntax - for one, it changes declarations and scoping rules. That's a pretty big semantic change (comparison operators etc. follow).
  - btford 13y ago
    Please show me this 3 month break AngularJS took in the Github activity log: https://github.com/angular/angular.js/pulse https://github.com/angular/angular.js/pulse
  - likeclockwork 13y ago
    They actually rewrote Angular in Dart, they didn't just make it work with Dart.
- antihero 13y ago
  How much percentage of the dart team/steering committee are Google employees? If that number is higher than, say, 50%, then that is a liability because Google as a company's intentions are unpredictable, because whether the people working on it are good guys or not (and I'm sure you are), there's a common entity that has power over you (your employer) and to some degree your work.
rdtsc 13y ago
> Google's overbearing intention is obvious. Please. > That's what causes the friction: resentment that a pretty flawed language is being pushed. "flawed language" you mean [] + [] doesn't equal '' ? Oh look it throws a "TypeError: Object #<JSArray> has no method '$add'", yes please bring more such flawed languages around Google, I love them!
ahoge 13y ago
> It's being designed as a javascript replacement. Yes, it is. But I'm not sure why you're viewing that as something negative. It addresses the kind of problems everyone encounters when they try to write bigger applications in JavaScript. GWT and the Closure Compiler also did this kind of thing. Dart does the same, but in a far more elegant manner. It's terser and the workflow is far more streamlined. Having proper tooling is really great. Also, thanks to the type annotations you'll need fewer tests, you get better documentation, and it also acts as a safety net for refactoring/maintenance work. It will enable more people (myself included) to write larger high-quality web applications.

spankalee 13y ago

What are "open, cheerful intentions"? Open? Dart has been open-sourced for 2 years now - only having its proof-of-concept done in-house before the announcement. Cheerful? Not sure how one language that compiles to JS is more "cheerful" than an other, but we're really a cheerful bunch in person. I'm sure you could have a beer with us if you'd like :) As to the your and the OP's point about Dart being another CoffeeScript, this is really far from reality. CoffeeScript is just syntax changes, and that's not sufficient for fixing JavaScript major problems - which come form its semantics, not it's syntax. Dart and CoffeeScript are actually quite far apart on the spectrum of compile-to-JS languages: Dart tries to keep a similar syntax and fix the semantics, CoffeeScript tries to keep the semantics and "fix" the syntax (I personally find CoffeeScript very hard to read). Claiming that Dart is another CoffeeScript, to me, shows a real lack of knowledge about one or both of the languages.

Helianthus 13y ago
... I was talking ecosystem niche and I think that obvious. Both languages have to compile to javascript to run in the browser, and it's going to stay that way. You might not be involved enough in the politics of programmer mindshare, but plainly: Dart is attempting a takeover. Takeovers can be smiles and open source, but they're still takeovers, and this one is doomed to fail. If you don't see that, you're focused on the work in front of you and (again) not on the politics of technology. Which is fine. I'm sure it would be lovely to have a beer with you, and talk languages and compiler design well into the next day's hangover. But if you're going to get involved with a conversation on politics, you should think about Google's goals with Dart and whether they're reasonable or beneficial. General sentiment here? They're neither.
- spankalee 13y ago
  No one is forcing anyone to use Dart, anymore than people are forced to use CoffeeScript, Haxe or pyjamas. Many engineers at Google want a sane alternative to JavaScript, and we think it'll save thousands of hours of developer time, millions of developer dollars, and also _user_ time and money as they benefit from more stable apps with more features. JavaScript is not going anyway. If developers flock to Dart, presumably we've offered something beneficial to them. I joined the Dart team because I thought is was a worthy and important project that could beneficially impact a very large number of people. I _do_ think about these things, they're quite important to me. The goals of more sane semantics, more optimizable structure, and better toolability and tools are to me, and a lot of other engineers, incredibly reasonable and beneficial. That's actually the entire point of the project is to be more reasonable and beneficial than the alternatives :) If fact, I think I'll use that as my informal Dart tagline: "Dart, reasonable and beneficial!" More seriously, Dart is created by people who think that JS is broken and we need an alternative. I hope you're not claiming that that's really an unreasonable opinion, and that the only reasonable point of view is that JavaScript should always be the only language used to develop web applications. I'm sure reasonable people can disagree about the degree of brokenness of JavaScript, and about different solutions to the problems.
  - Helianthus 13y ago
    I'm aware of JS language angst, yes. Developers aren't flocking to Dart. Many are resentful of it. You can ignore the resentment and the reasoning behind it if you want, but that won't make Dart more reasonable or beneficial.
    - detst 13y ago
      > reasoning behind it In all of your condescending[1] comments, you have forgotten to actually articulate what your reasoning is. These are as close as you got: Dart doesn't have the open, cheerful intentions Google's overbearing intention is obvious flawed language this one is doomed to fail forced down our throat [1] I'll Identify these on request. They're unwarranted, counter-productive and rude.
aroman 13y ago
I think his point — and I tend to agree with it, accurate or not — was that there is an inherent distrust that comes with a project "sponsored" by a large black box (in this case, Google). Google doesn't exactly have a great track record of supporting things forever, or even keeping their "open source" systems as open as possible[1]. So, people are naturally suspicious. CoffeeScript doesn't have this vibe, to me at least. It's made by a team of people across companies (although I think it is sponsored partially by The New York Times Company?) and there is a lot of community which lives outside a specific company's ecosystem. That said, it could just be my own personal bias, having used coffee script extensively and not used Dart much at all. [1] http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/11/google-just-pulled-a-facebook-home-kitkats-primary-interface-is-google-search/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/11/google-just-pulled-a-...
xixixao 13y ago
There is one major difference between Dart and CoffeeScript: The Angular team didn't have to take a 3 month holiday to make Angular work with CoffeeScript. If Dart was just another compile-to-JS language, then they wouldn't have to bother at all. Yet, CoffeeScript is not just a different syntax - for one, it changes declarations and scoping rules. That's a pretty big semantic change (comparison operators etc. follow).
- btford 13y ago
  Please show me this 3 month break AngularJS took in the Github activity log: https://github.com/angular/angular.js/pulse https://github.com/angular/angular.js/pulse
- likeclockwork 13y ago
  They actually rewrote Angular in Dart, they didn't just make it work with Dart.
antihero 13y ago
How much percentage of the dart team/steering committee are Google employees? If that number is higher than, say, 50%, then that is a liability because Google as a company's intentions are unpredictable, because whether the people working on it are good guys or not (and I'm sure you are), there's a common entity that has power over you (your employer) and to some degree your work.

rdtsc 13y ago

> Google's overbearing intention is obvious. Please. > That's what causes the friction: resentment that a pretty flawed language is being pushed. "flawed language" you mean [] + [] doesn't equal '' ? Oh look it throws a "TypeError: Object #<JSArray> has no method '$add'", yes please bring more such flawed languages around Google, I love them!

ahoge 13y ago

> It's being designed as a javascript replacement. Yes, it is. But I'm not sure why you're viewing that as something negative. It addresses the kind of problems everyone encounters when they try to write bigger applications in JavaScript. GWT and the Closure Compiler also did this kind of thing. Dart does the same, but in a far more elegant manner. It's terser and the workflow is far more streamlined. Having proper tooling is really great. Also, thanks to the type annotations you'll need fewer tests, you get better documentation, and it also acts as a safety net for refactoring/maintenance work. It will enable more people (myself included) to write larger high-quality web applications.