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I think Dart has the potential to become a target for other languages [1]. The already-high-level code has a performant VM and it takes advantage of optional ty

I think Dart has the potential to become a target for other languages [1]. The already-high-level code has a performant VM and it takes advantage of optional typing (unlike any other VMs I am aware of). In order to do so though, they should at least make a spawnString (like isolate's spawnUri) or even better, have the ability to JIT dart code by string but not execute it right away. 1 - https://www.dartlang.org/articles/why-not-bytecode/ https://www.dartlang.org/articles/why-not-bytecode/

pacala 13y ago
I hope people give Dart a chance before unleashing the fragmentation zoo upon it. It's quite a nice language.
georgemcbay 13y ago
Adobe's AVM2 (ActionScript 3 VM) took advantage of optional typing. Once upon a time this was going to be the basis of ECMAScript4 via tamarin, but that never panned out for lots of reasons, most of them political.
- camus2 13y ago
  Funny how things would be different today. ES4 failed mainly because some people thought ES3 was good enough. Adobe,harshly critized for Flash was the one pushing for a better javascript. I will never understand why Microsoft basically killed ES4. They had their own implementation on .net ( JScript.net ) so it's not like it was going to be a huge effort. The only reason would be Microsoft pushing Silverlight at that time which was a huge flop. We basically lost a decade because of it, as i predict javascript will eventually look like ES4,that's inevitable.
  - pekk 13y ago
    Javascript lost a decade because of that. People without an investment in Javascript have lost over a decade because of Javascript's monopoly on clients being maintained. If we had not been forcibly locked into Javascript all this time, then competition would have produced a better alternative or whipped the process designing Javascript into shape. Now we are stuck with this ridiculously tall, messy stack which uses an application scripting language as a compile target, still lacks basic features like a standard package system, and pushes trivial language features like iteration into third-party libraries like jQuery. So now we are constantly pushing megs of JS, using insanely complicated build systems to get anything done, and for all this trouble our code runs at a speed roughly equivalent to C in 1998. (Now that Flash and Silverlight are dead I think it is safe for me to complain about Javascript without being an enemy of the open internet or whatever.) I don't really care about Dart, but it's way past due that there was something serious to challenge Javascript. All the triumphalism about how Javascript is already a perfect language to use for eternity is explicitly counterproductive. Making the whole internet depend on the fortunes of one language just sucks.
    - pjmlp 13y ago
      > So now we are constantly pushing megs of JS, using insanely complicated build systems to get anything done, and for all this trouble our code runs at a speed roughly equivalent to C in 1998. Those who care, just keep happily using plain native applications.
  - espadrine 13y ago
    > I will never understand why Microsoft basically killed ES4. Simplicity of the language. I'll easily agree that ES4 would have been very interesting, but ES5 (and its spiritual successor features in ES6) gave us subtle low-level power that would have lacked otherwise.
munificent 13y ago
> In order to do so though, they should at least make a spawnString (like isolate's spawnUri) or even better, have the ability to JIT dart code by string but not execute it right away. Of all of the core libraries in Dart (core, html, io, async, etc.) the isolate library has had the least attention so far. Now that those other libraries are stable, I'm hoping the corelib folks will have the time to give isolates some much needed love. I definitely want spawnString() too and we've had to do some gross workarounds in pub to deal with its absence (dumping stuff to temp files).

pacala 13y ago

I hope people give Dart a chance before unleashing the fragmentation zoo upon it. It's quite a nice language.

georgemcbay 13y ago

Adobe's AVM2 (ActionScript 3 VM) took advantage of optional typing. Once upon a time this was going to be the basis of ECMAScript4 via tamarin, but that never panned out for lots of reasons, most of them political.

camus2 13y ago
Funny how things would be different today. ES4 failed mainly because some people thought ES3 was good enough. Adobe,harshly critized for Flash was the one pushing for a better javascript. I will never understand why Microsoft basically killed ES4. They had their own implementation on .net ( JScript.net ) so it's not like it was going to be a huge effort. The only reason would be Microsoft pushing Silverlight at that time which was a huge flop. We basically lost a decade because of it, as i predict javascript will eventually look like ES4,that's inevitable.
- pekk 13y ago
  Javascript lost a decade because of that. People without an investment in Javascript have lost over a decade because of Javascript's monopoly on clients being maintained. If we had not been forcibly locked into Javascript all this time, then competition would have produced a better alternative or whipped the process designing Javascript into shape. Now we are stuck with this ridiculously tall, messy stack which uses an application scripting language as a compile target, still lacks basic features like a standard package system, and pushes trivial language features like iteration into third-party libraries like jQuery. So now we are constantly pushing megs of JS, using insanely complicated build systems to get anything done, and for all this trouble our code runs at a speed roughly equivalent to C in 1998. (Now that Flash and Silverlight are dead I think it is safe for me to complain about Javascript without being an enemy of the open internet or whatever.) I don't really care about Dart, but it's way past due that there was something serious to challenge Javascript. All the triumphalism about how Javascript is already a perfect language to use for eternity is explicitly counterproductive. Making the whole internet depend on the fortunes of one language just sucks.
  - pjmlp 13y ago
    > So now we are constantly pushing megs of JS, using insanely complicated build systems to get anything done, and for all this trouble our code runs at a speed roughly equivalent to C in 1998. Those who care, just keep happily using plain native applications.
- espadrine 13y ago
  > I will never understand why Microsoft basically killed ES4. Simplicity of the language. I'll easily agree that ES4 would have been very interesting, but ES5 (and its spiritual successor features in ES6) gave us subtle low-level power that would have lacked otherwise.

munificent 13y ago

> In order to do so though, they should at least make a spawnString (like isolate's spawnUri) or even better, have the ability to JIT dart code by string but not execute it right away. Of all of the core libraries in Dart (core, html, io, async, etc.) the isolate library has had the least attention so far. Now that those other libraries are stable, I'm hoping the corelib folks will have the time to give isolates some much needed love. I definitely want spawnString() too and we've had to do some gross workarounds in pub to deal with its absence (dumping stuff to temp files).