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"Future of JavaScript" doc from our internal "JavaScript Summit" (2010)
- Tarang 13y agoIn short they wanted to make a new language called Dash/Dart that solved the problems around javascript.
- CurtHagenlocher 13y agoI remember reading this on HN almost three years ago. Is there anything about it that makes it interesting again now?
- Tarang 13y agoThey just announced their portable native client. (http://thenextweb.com/google/2013/11/12/google-launches-portable-native-client-lets-developers-compile-code-run-hardware-site/ http://thenextweb.com/google/2013/11/12/google-launches-port...)
- dragonwriter 13y agoActually, they announced PNaCl many years ago. What they did is release PNaCl in a stable build of Chrome.
- Touche 13y agoAnd has nothing to do with Dart.
- dragonwriter 13y agoThey are related in that Dart and PNaCl are approaches to addressing the same problem domain, or at least problem domains with substantial overlap.
- pjmlp 13y agoThis was communicated already at Google IO 2013, that it was on their plans to make it so. It was in one of the Chrome sessions if I am not mistaken.
- rdtsc 13y agoIn summary, the way I see it: A lot of hipsters that hunt and jump on the latest tech bandwagon hated that AngularJS team ported their framework to Dart. So they started spewing hate and vitriol at Google and Dart developers. The underlying sentiment I read was -- "you mean I will be stuck unable to tell everyone I work with the latest bleeding edge tech because there is a newer, cooler faster hemorrhaging tech out there, after I spent nights online evangelizing about how awesome this last bandwagon I jumped on is" It was rather amusing and sad. The amusing part is how the stereotype of immaturity and childishness was just re-enforcing itself. The sad part is that here is Google spending man months (and heck, if you know me, I don't like Google's privacy track record as anyone else here) of work and giving it back to the community and as a thank you they got spit in the face ("how dare you release open source projects, that you spend money developing, in a direction I don't agree with!").
- gavinlynch 13y agoI have no idea what you are talking about.
- rdtsc 13y agoWell then perhaps instead of downvoting just do a quick search. It takes 10 seconds. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6677481 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6677481
- gavinlynch 13y agoNo, I'm talking about the substance of your comment. It's rambling and conflating seemingly completely unrelated topics. I do not recognize what you have described as any current reality I am a part of: >> "...lot of hipsters that hunt and jump on the latest tech bandwagon..." >> "The underlying sentiment I read was -- "you mean I will be stuck unable to tell everyone I work with the latest bleeding edge tech because there is a newer, cooler faster hemorrhaging tech out there, after I spent nights online evangelizing about how awesome this last bandwagon I jumped on is"" >> "The sad part is that here is Google spending man months of work and giving it back to the community and as a thank you they got spit in the face" Who are we even talking about here? Which community? You seem to be taking a few anecdotes, apparently of HN posts, interpreting them in your own.. strange way and then using that information to paint with the broadest of brushes. Hipsters? We're talking about software development here and programming language choices. -Your- reality might be some strange war where youth subcultures are duking it out for the future of the web based on childish ego fights and posing or something... That's not my reality.
- adrianlmm 13y agoYes, Dart 1.0 will get released soon, so I presume this is a way to get attention.
- eknkc 13y agoAnyone uses Dart on production?
- adrianlmm 13y agoI do, and it is awesome, I cannot back to JS after using Dart.
- srin 13y agoCool! I've been looking at it for some projects. Can you link or maybe just explain what you use it for/with?
- adrianlmm 13y agoI'm using on intranet projects, making web 2.0 applications is a breeze with Dart, in pub.darlang.org you can get a list of projects and libraries using Dart.
- eknkc 13y agoDart looks pretty good to me actually. But it's from Google and that scares me at this point. ES6 also gonna be pretty good but it's still not released and I think it'll be at year 2030 or something.
- adrianlmm 13y agoES6 is going to be awesome, but the advatange I see in Dart is its optional typing system and included libraries.
- vezzy-fnord 13y agoI haven't had much experience with Dart, but from observation and brief casual use it strikes me as if Google looked at JavaScript and decided that the way to fix it is by removing the "Script" part.
- afsina 13y agoFar from it. http://programming.oreilly.com/2013/05/dart-is-not-the-language-you-think-it-is.html http://programming.oreilly.com/2013/05/dart-is-not-the-langu...
- vezzy-fnord 13y agoA few of these differences are subtle or largely not drastic. Terse main function -> why a main function in the first place? The VM excluding the compilation into bytecode is a runtime difference, not a purely language one. Pure OO is a natural consequence of having an optional typing system, thus removing the necessity for primitive data types. Multiple classes, no mandatory class requirement, multiple inheritance and operator overloading are all fine. These are improvements to the Java model, allowing for more power. String interpolation is fine, it removes the need for the bloated String.format() method or inelegant string concatenations in Java. I never said that Dart was a complete Java clone, however. I implied that its design was largely motivated by a philosophy to apply a Java-esque model for the web. Of course they've made some improvements, but I don't find it that great in general. I think the web would benefit from a client-side scripting language based on Dylan. The semantics of Lisp with the syntax of ALGOL. Since the web is becoming largely data-driven, having code as data would be a big advantage, while still retaining a familiar syntax.
- duaneb 13y agoI think it's actually the opposite; consider the ability to interpolate domain variables into string literals.
- jamra 13y agoI played around with Dart for a while. It is really great having a debugging console while you are working. The difficulty I had is that the popular frameworks do not target Dart so you'll always be a step behind when using Dart. I don't know if it's possible to port over a javascript framework, but I wonder what the benefit would really be. After all, you would still be using the framework's code structure. That kind of minimizes the benefit of using Dart. If they can make a nice web framework (like angular, backbone, etc) they'll find the niche that they need to fill.
- mtrimpe 13y agoThis article is (probably) posted in response to AngularDart being released recently [1], which was seen by some as an attempt by Google to push fragmented web standards. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6677481 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6677481
- jamra 13y agoThank you. The context makes a lot of sense to me now.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- chromanoid 13y agoEven if this is old, I don't understand why they don't push an open Browser VM spec. This would be much more open and fruitful.
- TillE 13y agoYeah, a flexible bytecode VM seems like the ideal solution for browser scripting, rather than the awful kludge of "compiling" things to Javascript. I'm not quite sure why there hasn't been more effort towards that.
- modarts 13y agohttps://www.dartlang.org/articles/why-not-bytecode/ https://www.dartlang.org/articles/why-not-bytecode/
- pera 13y ago> The key argument in favor of a language VM is the development process. > If you’re writing JavaScript, your “compile step” is just refreshing the browser. This is not a really strong argument: the development process could be exactly the same if your development environment automate certain task, as syntax checking (like with jslint), recompile when the sources have changed (ie file watch functionality), reload when save (like with tincr)...
- chromanoid 13y agopeople will want to choose their own language forever. not building some low level spec like asm.js or a similar bytecode like language is just a marketing strategy.
- duaneb 13y agoOk, what would you consider for a universal vm? It seems to me that it's much easier to put one in later than the fundamental problems with JS that need addressing now.
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- knodi 13y agoYes, death to javascript. I for some will not miss it and hope for its demise.
- _random_ 13y agoYou are not alone :). Non-JS devs are just generally less vocal.
- sum_yung_guy 13y agoHow does Dart compare to TypeScript? Dart never seemed to live up to performance expectations, from what I can tell. JS debugging is improving thanks to Mozilla and such. Where is the benefit?
- camus2 13y agoWell, at the performance level, Dart VM is much much more faster than Javascript ones. I dont think Google plans to kill Javascript. But Dart makes sense on Chromebooks for instance, where Google could deploy the Dart VM. So the benefit is for Google ecosystem. Front end devs are afraid of fragmentation , I think competition and choice is good. It will force JS to evolve much more faster, And why not ,maybe some day we will have a NodeDart too since Dart VM is open source, it would be awesome.
- afsina 13y agoAFAIK TypeScript is a language which is a super-set of Javascript so in a sense it contains the flaws of it. Dart is a more ambitious project as it contains a completely new language, a VM, a development browser called Dartium including the VM for fast development cycle and debugging, a modularity system (pub), a quite large client and server side library, a stand alone editor and a javascript trnaslator (dart2js). It also works in server side.
- jalan 13y agoOP here, this post was originally titled - Google Dash/Dart: Leaked Internal Email Edit: IMHO, I think the above title was better suited for this post. I respect the fact that HN moderators modified it to email subject, it refers to, but the title should have at least included keyword "Google".
- _random_ 13y agoThey really should have just picked a better existing language... High risk did not get rewarded for them :(.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- solomatov 13y agoIt's such a pity that Google choose to create such a flawed language as Dart instead of promoting GWT or creating a better Java for the web (which Kotlin might become). Yes, it is better than JavaScript but, IMHO, optional types is not a language feature but a built-in language flaw.
- filipedeschamps 13y agoWhat will happen with V8 engine and Node.js?