6 ms·

Dart: Google's ActiveX

by andyl 13y ago

Symmetry 13y ago
Would ActiveX have been so bad if it was open source and not tied into the operating system?
- corysama 13y ago
  ...and sandboxed? Dart is a fine language. The main thing is has going against it is the feature widely referred to as "Is Not JavaScript". Thus, the Dart-to-JavaScript compiler.
- nivla 13y ago
  >Would ActiveX have been so bad if it was open source and not tied into the operating system? This is my personal view and it may not be accurate: I don't think being open source or cross platform would have mattered to an average PC user back then. Windows held the dominance among PC users (>95%). It wasn't until the rise of firefox that people started noticing the benefits of open source and standards. ActiveX failed because it was way ahead of its time and that it wasn't sandboxed/virtualized making it a security blunder. The one click front door to your OS resulted in a flurry of exploits and viruses giving its bad rep as we know. Dart is leading the same path but in a secure way. I think eventually we will end up there with Web Apps and its only a matter of who gets there first.
egeozcan 13y ago
I'm not a big fan of Dart but IMHO a "leaked" internal memo on replacing JavaScript and an implementation as a browser embeddable VM which isn't used even in Chrome don't make it as evil as ActiveX.
pix64 13y ago
Isn't that NaCl?
haberman 13y ago
Dart is nothing like ActiveX. But apparently it is "cool" to invoke ActiveX for any browser technology you don't like. ActiveX was a way of loading untrusted binaries in-process with the browser and running them unsandboxed. Does Dart run untrusted machine code unsandboxed? No. If Dart is Google's ActiveX, then JavaScript is Netscape's ActiveX, Java is Sun's ActiveX and Emscripten is Mozilla's ActiveX. (Note: none of these is actually true) Comparisons to Silverlight or Flash would also be inaccurate, since neither can compile to JavaScript and both are closed-source technologies that are not on any path to being standardized.
- stusmall 13y ago
  Honestly, ActiveX/JApplet comparison seems pretty fair to me. I know you said Java, but still.
  - haberman 13y ago
    Java Applets run sandboxed. ActiveX did not. It's the difference between running an exe attached to an email and visiting a web page that runs JavaScript. Do these sound the same to you? For more info see: http://sip.cs.princeton.edu/java-vs-activex.html http://sip.cs.princeton.edu/java-vs-activex.html
    - stusmall 13y ago
      Sure there is a sandbox... but its a bit leaky
- msoad 13y ago
  It's safe to defend Dart to the point that your Gmail will run faster in Chrome that has Dart VM. Then Firefox and IE might fall behind in performing for Google web apps and then you will see how Dart will hurt web ecosystem. I'm just guessing. So far Dart2JS is pretty close to native Dart.
  - haberman 13y ago
    To me this is like saying: "it's safe to defend Servo up to the point that it's faster single-threaded browser engines. Then Chrome and IE might fall behind in performing for web apps and then you will see how Servo will hurt the web ecosystem." To be honest, I hope that Servo out-performs the current browser engines, and the that other browsers feel pressure to follow suit, because it will push the web forward as a whole. It's like SpiderMonkey and V8 did with JS performance five years ago. Now you will probably say "but Dart is a new content type," and I see where you are coming from. But to me it's no different than asm.js. asm.js a new content type also, it just happens to be very clever and outputs programs which are a Polyglot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyglot_(computing) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyglot_(computing)) of the new asm.js content type and regular JS. It is very cool how they have done this, but it doesn't change the fact that asm.js, when processed by an asm.js-aware compiler, is a different content type than regular JS and is processed in a different way that is intended to be faster than plain JS. So to me, a putting Dart source file right next to Dart2JS output on the open web is no different than asm.js, and I think both are equally valid approaches to moving the web forward.
jamra 13y ago
Dart can compile into javascript. It is nothing like ActiveX. ActiveX is basically running native code from the browser. How are you making this link?
- Mikeb85 13y ago
  Dart's original purpose was having its own VM run in the browser - search 'Dartium'. Only when that idea failed to gain traction did they turn it into a compile-to-js language...
  - floitsch 13y ago
    Dart2js was there from the beginning and the project was always well stuffed. It was never an afterthought and some decisions in the Dart language were taken because of the constraints we have when compiling to JavaScript.

Dart: Google's ActiveX

by andyl 13y ago

Dart: Google's ActiveX

Symmetry 13y ago

Would ActiveX have been so bad if it was open source and not tied into the operating system?

corysama 13y ago
...and sandboxed? Dart is a fine language. The main thing is has going against it is the feature widely referred to as "Is Not JavaScript". Thus, the Dart-to-JavaScript compiler.
nivla 13y ago
>Would ActiveX have been so bad if it was open source and not tied into the operating system? This is my personal view and it may not be accurate: I don't think being open source or cross platform would have mattered to an average PC user back then. Windows held the dominance among PC users (>95%). It wasn't until the rise of firefox that people started noticing the benefits of open source and standards. ActiveX failed because it was way ahead of its time and that it wasn't sandboxed/virtualized making it a security blunder. The one click front door to your OS resulted in a flurry of exploits and viruses giving its bad rep as we know. Dart is leading the same path but in a secure way. I think eventually we will end up there with Web Apps and its only a matter of who gets there first.

egeozcan 13y ago

I'm not a big fan of Dart but IMHO a "leaked" internal memo on replacing JavaScript and an implementation as a browser embeddable VM which isn't used even in Chrome don't make it as evil as ActiveX.

pix64 13y ago

Isn't that NaCl?

haberman 13y ago

Dart is nothing like ActiveX. But apparently it is "cool" to invoke ActiveX for any browser technology you don't like. ActiveX was a way of loading untrusted binaries in-process with the browser and running them unsandboxed. Does Dart run untrusted machine code unsandboxed? No. If Dart is Google's ActiveX, then JavaScript is Netscape's ActiveX, Java is Sun's ActiveX and Emscripten is Mozilla's ActiveX. (Note: none of these is actually true) Comparisons to Silverlight or Flash would also be inaccurate, since neither can compile to JavaScript and both are closed-source technologies that are not on any path to being standardized.

stusmall 13y ago
Honestly, ActiveX/JApplet comparison seems pretty fair to me. I know you said Java, but still.
- haberman 13y ago
  Java Applets run sandboxed. ActiveX did not. It's the difference between running an exe attached to an email and visiting a web page that runs JavaScript. Do these sound the same to you? For more info see: http://sip.cs.princeton.edu/java-vs-activex.html http://sip.cs.princeton.edu/java-vs-activex.html
  - stusmall 13y ago
    Sure there is a sandbox... but its a bit leaky
msoad 13y ago
It's safe to defend Dart to the point that your Gmail will run faster in Chrome that has Dart VM. Then Firefox and IE might fall behind in performing for Google web apps and then you will see how Dart will hurt web ecosystem. I'm just guessing. So far Dart2JS is pretty close to native Dart.
- haberman 13y ago
  To me this is like saying: "it's safe to defend Servo up to the point that it's faster single-threaded browser engines. Then Chrome and IE might fall behind in performing for web apps and then you will see how Servo will hurt the web ecosystem." To be honest, I hope that Servo out-performs the current browser engines, and the that other browsers feel pressure to follow suit, because it will push the web forward as a whole. It's like SpiderMonkey and V8 did with JS performance five years ago. Now you will probably say "but Dart is a new content type," and I see where you are coming from. But to me it's no different than asm.js. asm.js a new content type also, it just happens to be very clever and outputs programs which are a Polyglot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyglot_(computing) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyglot_(computing)) of the new asm.js content type and regular JS. It is very cool how they have done this, but it doesn't change the fact that asm.js, when processed by an asm.js-aware compiler, is a different content type than regular JS and is processed in a different way that is intended to be faster than plain JS. So to me, a putting Dart source file right next to Dart2JS output on the open web is no different than asm.js, and I think both are equally valid approaches to moving the web forward.

jamra 13y ago

Dart can compile into javascript. It is nothing like ActiveX. ActiveX is basically running native code from the browser. How are you making this link?

Mikeb85 13y ago
Dart's original purpose was having its own VM run in the browser - search 'Dartium'. Only when that idea failed to gain traction did they turn it into a compile-to-js language...
- floitsch 13y ago
  Dart2js was there from the beginning and the project was always well stuffed. It was never an afterthought and some decisions in the Dart language were taken because of the constraints we have when compiling to JavaScript.