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For a Google-backed language to replace Rails, Golang has less of a shot IMHO. Mainly because the popularity of Rails stemmed initially from TextMate in the ori

For a Google-backed language to replace Rails, Golang has less of a shot IMHO. Mainly because the popularity of Rails stemmed initially from TextMate in the original screencasts. It'd be silly to say that's all that mattered so I'm going to merely strongly imply that without additional books or cookbooks, screen casts, etc. it's hard to see Golang taking off in a community that isn't already invested in learning it. Those looking for more stability will pick a JVM-based language, which includes JRuby, and call it a day. If I had to then pick a replacement, I would argue for Dart. Dartlang has a much stronger set of novice documentation, nodejs-like magic of running in client and server, but advanced Google mojo like support for SIMD. All Dart really needs is Chrome support and a decent "Rails" clone to popularize server-side development. We're a few years off, but Dart could be quite exciting. Or it could end up running on the JVM like everything else :p

dham 13y ago
AFAIK Dart still does not have generators. I want to like Dart but if puts me in the same boat as Javascript does on the server, then NO.
jerf 13y ago
"For a Google-backed language to replace Rails" It's not "replacing Rails", it's replacing new projects in what are today scripting languages (Perl, Python, Ruby, PHP, etc.). I see fewer people talking about Dart than I see doing things with Go. That said, I did finally beat Google Trends into producing [1], which is interesting. It was hard to convince Trends to show Dart as growing as quickly as Golang, though, so there may be a selection effect (of the several graphs I produced with Dart well behind Golang, this is the only one that shows them even tied), and it still shows Dart as tied with Go, and Go's growth being more steady. I'm still not sure Dart is growing like Go is. I suppose I should point out that the predictions were my best guesses about what will happen, and do not simply reflect what I "want" to happen. [1]: http://www.google.com/trends/explore#cat=0-5-31&q=dart%2C%20golang&cmpt=q http://www.google.com/trends/explore#cat=0-5-31&q=dart%2C%20...
- lstamour 13y ago
  Go's been out 4 years while Dart just hit 1.0 and requires a runtime as it's a bit less portable. Once Dart lands in Chrome, I can easily imagine it becoming the first choice of developers who prefer to develop code in their browser. A niche market now, but interesting to contemplate. I'm a bit more flexible when it comes to trying to predict the future than my posts indicate. I'm just offering an alternative hypothesis: Dart has many more screencasts and supported libraries from Google, including Angular.dart than Golang ever had, and it's only just hit 1.0. Golang has been fantastic for me to develop with, particularly on Google AppEngine and it's true Dart hasn't hit server-side popularity yet. But if we're predicting the future, based on JS and node.is alone, I'd suggest Dart has plenty of room to gain popularity quickly.
  - jerf 13y ago
    Oh, I see, that makes sense. For me, I was making broad predictions. No matter how exciting the web client dev is, it is and will remain still a niche, and Dart faces a huge challenge in the next 5 years as asm.js will relatively suddenly introduce it to competition from every other mainstream language in existence. Dart probably won't "die" for a while, but I'm not sure it won't end up "just another" one of the enormous pile of languages that it will be possible to do client-side programming in.
    - lstamour 13y ago
      I've learned to not bet against the ingenuity of Google engineers, particularly those building web browsers and development tools. :) Given that they've added very basic support for editing to Developer Tools in Chrome already, once Dart lands in Chrome, I could see a push to make Chrome the editor-of-choice for Dart, if not web-based editors in general. And it's true, there's more to development than type-and-run interactive shells, but that sure makes web development easier, doesn't it? asm.js benefits Dart as well, since they can target the same approaches for their JS target code gen. The real question is when will Google add development alternatives to Android? Chrome's nice, but it takes a mobile platform to sustain an ecosystem of client-side developers these days. Perhaps Chrome-on-Android will eventually become the new PhoneGap?

dham 13y ago

AFAIK Dart still does not have generators. I want to like Dart but if puts me in the same boat as Javascript does on the server, then NO.

jerf 13y ago

"For a Google-backed language to replace Rails" It's not "replacing Rails", it's replacing new projects in what are today scripting languages (Perl, Python, Ruby, PHP, etc.). I see fewer people talking about Dart than I see doing things with Go. That said, I did finally beat Google Trends into producing [1], which is interesting. It was hard to convince Trends to show Dart as growing as quickly as Golang, though, so there may be a selection effect (of the several graphs I produced with Dart well behind Golang, this is the only one that shows them even tied), and it still shows Dart as tied with Go, and Go's growth being more steady. I'm still not sure Dart is growing like Go is. I suppose I should point out that the predictions were my best guesses about what will happen, and do not simply reflect what I "want" to happen. [1]: http://www.google.com/trends/explore#cat=0-5-31&q=dart%2C%20golang&cmpt=q http://www.google.com/trends/explore#cat=0-5-31&q=dart%2C%20...

lstamour 13y ago
Go's been out 4 years while Dart just hit 1.0 and requires a runtime as it's a bit less portable. Once Dart lands in Chrome, I can easily imagine it becoming the first choice of developers who prefer to develop code in their browser. A niche market now, but interesting to contemplate. I'm a bit more flexible when it comes to trying to predict the future than my posts indicate. I'm just offering an alternative hypothesis: Dart has many more screencasts and supported libraries from Google, including Angular.dart than Golang ever had, and it's only just hit 1.0. Golang has been fantastic for me to develop with, particularly on Google AppEngine and it's true Dart hasn't hit server-side popularity yet. But if we're predicting the future, based on JS and node.is alone, I'd suggest Dart has plenty of room to gain popularity quickly.
- jerf 13y ago
  Oh, I see, that makes sense. For me, I was making broad predictions. No matter how exciting the web client dev is, it is and will remain still a niche, and Dart faces a huge challenge in the next 5 years as asm.js will relatively suddenly introduce it to competition from every other mainstream language in existence. Dart probably won't "die" for a while, but I'm not sure it won't end up "just another" one of the enormous pile of languages that it will be possible to do client-side programming in.
  - lstamour 13y ago
    I've learned to not bet against the ingenuity of Google engineers, particularly those building web browsers and development tools. :) Given that they've added very basic support for editing to Developer Tools in Chrome already, once Dart lands in Chrome, I could see a push to make Chrome the editor-of-choice for Dart, if not web-based editors in general. And it's true, there's more to development than type-and-run interactive shells, but that sure makes web development easier, doesn't it? asm.js benefits Dart as well, since they can target the same approaches for their JS target code gen. The real question is when will Google add development alternatives to Android? Chrome's nice, but it takes a mobile platform to sustain an ecosystem of client-side developers these days. Perhaps Chrome-on-Android will eventually become the new PhoneGap?