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I can't think of any language other than Go that had relatively high adoption pre-1.0 . Of course I'm sure someone will point out a few examples... but I digre

I can't think of any language other than Go that had relatively high adoption pre-1.0 . Of course I'm sure someone will point out a few examples... but I digress: Last I checked Java was the #1 or #2 top programming language in the world. Perhaps Dart makes it easier for a Java developer to do front-end web development while using a familiar paradigm.

cromwellian 13y ago
Reports of Java's death has been greatly exaggerated ;-)My guess is, Java8 will solve a lot of the whining about boilerplate types. The closure syntax, is in someways, more economical than JS.
- ajanuary 13y ago
  On the consumption side, yes. As far as I can tell, you still need to write out the function interfaces :(
  - cromwellian 13y ago
    But that's exactly the way library APIs should work, with all the pain and labor going into the API declaration, and the users of the library experiencing very little. In type inferenced statically typed languages like ML, Scala, or Haskell, you can get away with not mentioning the types in the bodies of most functions. The type declarations at the library level serve as useful documentation.
    - ajanuary 13y ago
      That creates a somewhat artificial boundary between libraries and consumers. I write plenty of code at all layers that would benefit from being able to accept code as an argument. If I want a private helper method that takes some code as an argument, do I have to create and name a function interface just for that? Yes, Javascript's anonymous function syntax is needlessly verbose, but that's trivially fixed and will be in future versions. Changing Java to not need a function interface is a much bigger challenge that I'm willing to bet won't come about for a long time, and is going to be a source of frustration for lots of people as they realise how useful cheap anonymous functions can be.
      - cromwellian 13y ago
        I'd argue that there already is, in well written libraries, an artificial boundary. Library APIs often have to be written for the consumption of others, so more care is usually given (in well written) libraries. You don't really need to create any function interfaces for most expressions since the most common ones are pre-defined (Supplier, Consumer, Predicate, Function, UnaryOp, BinaryOp, etc), and the basic rules allow a lot of flexibility. I've been doing a lot of Java8 recently due to work integrating it into GWT (https://plus.google.com/+RayCromwell/posts/C4QYmWWQguT https://plus.google.com/+RayCromwell/posts/C4QYmWWQguT) and the experience has been delightful. In actual use (as opposed to testcases), it's been very economical, especially the this::foo constructor vs the JS equivalent which needs bind(), and the fact that you get good auto-complete is great.
        ajanuary 13y ago
        My comment was poorly phrased regarding libraries. What I meant was there's plenty of code if want to use lambdas for that isn't a carefully planned api boundary. Even with the provided function interfaces I worry there will be cases they don't cover which means people won't use anonymous functions where they're useful. However, given you seem to have used Java 8 and. I haven't, I'll relent :)
- taude 13y ago
  I'm willing to be we'll still be talking about Java's impeding death in 10 years here on HN. With all the different languages supported on the JVM, and new ones to be invented....it's not going anywhere.
  - robmcm 13y ago
    Or the fact it seems to be very prevalent in places like India and China. The fact there is a new fashionable language in the valley doesn't mean it's going to be popular world wide.
nailer 13y ago
Version numbers are arbitrary, and most of the JS community were quite ready to check out dart as soon as it was released. Agreed re existing java developers though. But even in the java community, scala syntax is popular for the same radios dart is unpopular for web devs. I've seen more typescript interest than I have dart interest, again because type safety has nothing to do with unnecessary verbosity. Languages have users just like programs do. We know, as developers, that making users do extra work is poor. Java is renowned as the 'I studied computer science at university but...' language. Why is Google unnecessarily repeating the mistakes? Google: make dart 2 cleaner and you'll immediately engage not just java users, but existing web developers and people new to software as well.
- munificent 13y ago
  > most of the JS community were quite ready to check out dart as soon as it was released. There are definitely early adopter, bleeding edge types who love to look at things that are brand new. But we've gotten a lot of feedback from developers saying they are interested in Dart but not comfortable using it in mission-critical apps when the language is still changing. Going 1.0 is a big deal for those people. > I've seen more typescript interest than I have dart interest, again because type safety has nothing to do with unnecessary verbosity. I'm not sure what you mean here. My experience has been that Dart is a good bit more terse than TypeScript (getting rid of "this." everywhere certainly helps). Are you trying to say Dart is unnecessarily verbose, or that that doesn't matter?
  - nailer 13y ago
    > Are you trying to say Dart is unnecessarily verbose Yes. See other posts.
    - munificent 13y ago
      The only post I saw from you on that was main(). I'll reply there.
threeseed 13y ago
Please. Every professional developer (including Java focused one) knows enough Javascript to do what they need. Especially with frameworks like JQuery, AngularJS, KnockoutJS etc it all really isn't that hard. And on large projects which are the domain of Java/.Net developers you often have dedicated Front End developers anyway.

cromwellian 13y ago

Reports of Java's death has been greatly exaggerated ;-)My guess is, Java8 will solve a lot of the whining about boilerplate types. The closure syntax, is in someways, more economical than JS.

ajanuary 13y ago
On the consumption side, yes. As far as I can tell, you still need to write out the function interfaces :(
- cromwellian 13y ago
  But that's exactly the way library APIs should work, with all the pain and labor going into the API declaration, and the users of the library experiencing very little. In type inferenced statically typed languages like ML, Scala, or Haskell, you can get away with not mentioning the types in the bodies of most functions. The type declarations at the library level serve as useful documentation.
  - ajanuary 13y ago
    That creates a somewhat artificial boundary between libraries and consumers. I write plenty of code at all layers that would benefit from being able to accept code as an argument. If I want a private helper method that takes some code as an argument, do I have to create and name a function interface just for that? Yes, Javascript's anonymous function syntax is needlessly verbose, but that's trivially fixed and will be in future versions. Changing Java to not need a function interface is a much bigger challenge that I'm willing to bet won't come about for a long time, and is going to be a source of frustration for lots of people as they realise how useful cheap anonymous functions can be.
    - cromwellian 13y ago
      I'd argue that there already is, in well written libraries, an artificial boundary. Library APIs often have to be written for the consumption of others, so more care is usually given (in well written) libraries. You don't really need to create any function interfaces for most expressions since the most common ones are pre-defined (Supplier, Consumer, Predicate, Function, UnaryOp, BinaryOp, etc), and the basic rules allow a lot of flexibility. I've been doing a lot of Java8 recently due to work integrating it into GWT (https://plus.google.com/+RayCromwell/posts/C4QYmWWQguT https://plus.google.com/+RayCromwell/posts/C4QYmWWQguT) and the experience has been delightful. In actual use (as opposed to testcases), it's been very economical, especially the this::foo constructor vs the JS equivalent which needs bind(), and the fact that you get good auto-complete is great.
      - ajanuary 13y ago
        My comment was poorly phrased regarding libraries. What I meant was there's plenty of code if want to use lambdas for that isn't a carefully planned api boundary. Even with the provided function interfaces I worry there will be cases they don't cover which means people won't use anonymous functions where they're useful. However, given you seem to have used Java 8 and. I haven't, I'll relent :)
taude 13y ago
I'm willing to be we'll still be talking about Java's impeding death in 10 years here on HN. With all the different languages supported on the JVM, and new ones to be invented....it's not going anywhere.
- robmcm 13y ago
  Or the fact it seems to be very prevalent in places like India and China. The fact there is a new fashionable language in the valley doesn't mean it's going to be popular world wide.

nailer 13y ago

Version numbers are arbitrary, and most of the JS community were quite ready to check out dart as soon as it was released. Agreed re existing java developers though. But even in the java community, scala syntax is popular for the same radios dart is unpopular for web devs. I've seen more typescript interest than I have dart interest, again because type safety has nothing to do with unnecessary verbosity. Languages have users just like programs do. We know, as developers, that making users do extra work is poor. Java is renowned as the 'I studied computer science at university but...' language. Why is Google unnecessarily repeating the mistakes? Google: make dart 2 cleaner and you'll immediately engage not just java users, but existing web developers and people new to software as well.

munificent 13y ago
> most of the JS community were quite ready to check out dart as soon as it was released. There are definitely early adopter, bleeding edge types who love to look at things that are brand new. But we've gotten a lot of feedback from developers saying they are interested in Dart but not comfortable using it in mission-critical apps when the language is still changing. Going 1.0 is a big deal for those people. > I've seen more typescript interest than I have dart interest, again because type safety has nothing to do with unnecessary verbosity. I'm not sure what you mean here. My experience has been that Dart is a good bit more terse than TypeScript (getting rid of "this." everywhere certainly helps). Are you trying to say Dart is unnecessarily verbose, or that that doesn't matter?
- nailer 13y ago
  > Are you trying to say Dart is unnecessarily verbose Yes. See other posts.
  - munificent 13y ago
    The only post I saw from you on that was main(). I'll reply there.

threeseed 13y ago

Please. Every professional developer (including Java focused one) knows enough Javascript to do what they need. Especially with frameworks like JQuery, AngularJS, KnockoutJS etc it all really isn't that hard. And on large projects which are the domain of Java/.Net developers you often have dedicated Front End developers anyway.