6 ms·

Dart is a Google proprietary product.

by gress 12y ago

dragonwriter 12y ago
Its neither proprietary in the sense of closed implementation or in the sense of not having an open, freely implementable spec. Its "proprietary" only in the sense of "not adopted by a standards body".
- gress 12y ago
  Not adopted by a standards body is a pretty significant factor. It is also proprietary in that Google is in absolute control of the development process.
  - spankalee 12y ago
    I think anyone can participate in the ECMA TC52 meetings. I'm not sure about membership in ECMA, I think there other requirements.
    - gress 12y ago
      There appears to be no activity or information about this process that is publicly available.
      - spankalee 12y ago
        That's a very legitimate complaint. Gilad Bracha sometimes posts updates[1] to the Dart mailing lists, but I'm not familiar with ECMA, or if it has a standard way of posting information and updates about technical committee work. I'll raise it with the team and see if we can have a place to post upcoming meetings, agendas, minutes, and decisions and draft specifications. It'd also be nice to have a way, besides the issue tracker (which like all issue trackers can seem like a black hole for issues for some people) to propose items for upcoming meetings. I find Python's PEP to be a pretty nice system. [1]: https://groups.google.com/a/dartlang.org/forum/#!searchin/misc/tc52%7Csort:date/misc/Oh_OSjx_Go0/AjntJpNp6w0J https://groups.google.com/a/dartlang.org/forum/#!searchin/mi...
  - nknighthb 12y ago
    Pretty significant factor in what? Write down all the reasonably popular programming languages you can think of. How many have been adopted by a standards body? How many have been adopted by a standards body in their current form? I hardly ever write code in a standardized language. Actually, I don't think I know anyone who writes code in a standardized language, because nontrivial programs in "standardized" languages almost always go outside the strict confines of whatever mediocre crap some committee adopted.
    - gress 12y ago
      C, C++, JavaScript, Java, Fortran Only the vast majority of all commercial code ever written.
      - spankalee 12y ago
        Those are all examples of languages that started off as proprietary, just like Dart.
      - nknighthb 12y ago
        You've just proven my point while cleverly but unsuccessfully trying to avoid being responsive to my inquiry. Java was never adopted in any form by a standards body, three of the remaining four are an already-small and ever-shrinking share of the industry, and ECMAScript is never up to date with the latest developments in JavaScript.
        gress 12y ago
        Even if you are right, and I'd only grant you that I am partially wrong about java because the JCP has collapsed since the Oracle takeover - the rest are just you adding qualifiers to minimize the contradiction, so what? Your position is simply to dismiss the value of standards and state that it's fine that Dart is proprietary. Also your statement about ECMAScript is flat out disingenuous. JavaScript implementations may move ahead between ECMAScript standards, but it is standardized, and by a real cross-industry group, not just a rubber stamp from one company. It is hard to take seriously an assertion that the level of standardization between Dart and JavaScript is comparable.
- spankalee 12y ago
  Well, we have ECMA TC52 which will hopefully ratify the specification pretty soon.
- cpeterso 12y ago
  But proprietary in the sense of that there is only one implementation and it is maintained by one company (Google).
  - tomp 12y ago
    It's always available to be forked. By the same standards, Ubuntu is proprietary, as is Firefox.
    - gress 12y ago
      A forked programming language is no longer the same language.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
_random_ 12y ago
That's not a big deal. Browsers are in a desperate need for a non-transpiled client-side language competition.
- gress 12y ago
  It's the lack of competition that makes it a problem.
spankalee 12y ago
There aren't that many languages that aren't "proprietary" in some way or another at their beginnings. C, Java, JavaScript, Rust, Go, Swift, Python, Perl, Ruby, Clojure, TypeScript... on and on. Haskell is one of the few modern languages I know of where a language was birthed in committee. ALGOL and COBOL are some older examples.

Dart is a Google proprietary product.

by gress 12y ago

Dart is a Google proprietary product.

Its neither proprietary in the sense of closed implementation or in the sense of not having an open, freely implementable spec. Its "proprietary" only in the sense of "not adopted by a standards body".

gress 12y ago
Not adopted by a standards body is a pretty significant factor. It is also proprietary in that Google is in absolute control of the development process.
- spankalee 12y ago
  I think anyone can participate in the ECMA TC52 meetings. I'm not sure about membership in ECMA, I think there other requirements.
  - gress 12y ago
    There appears to be no activity or information about this process that is publicly available.
    - spankalee 12y ago
      That's a very legitimate complaint. Gilad Bracha sometimes posts updates[1] to the Dart mailing lists, but I'm not familiar with ECMA, or if it has a standard way of posting information and updates about technical committee work. I'll raise it with the team and see if we can have a place to post upcoming meetings, agendas, minutes, and decisions and draft specifications. It'd also be nice to have a way, besides the issue tracker (which like all issue trackers can seem like a black hole for issues for some people) to propose items for upcoming meetings. I find Python's PEP to be a pretty nice system. [1]: https://groups.google.com/a/dartlang.org/forum/#!searchin/misc/tc52%7Csort:date/misc/Oh_OSjx_Go0/AjntJpNp6w0J https://groups.google.com/a/dartlang.org/forum/#!searchin/mi...
- nknighthb 12y ago
  Pretty significant factor in what? Write down all the reasonably popular programming languages you can think of. How many have been adopted by a standards body? How many have been adopted by a standards body in their current form? I hardly ever write code in a standardized language. Actually, I don't think I know anyone who writes code in a standardized language, because nontrivial programs in "standardized" languages almost always go outside the strict confines of whatever mediocre crap some committee adopted.
  - gress 12y ago
    C, C++, JavaScript, Java, Fortran Only the vast majority of all commercial code ever written.
    - spankalee 12y ago
      Those are all examples of languages that started off as proprietary, just like Dart.
    - nknighthb 12y ago
      You've just proven my point while cleverly but unsuccessfully trying to avoid being responsive to my inquiry. Java was never adopted in any form by a standards body, three of the remaining four are an already-small and ever-shrinking share of the industry, and ECMAScript is never up to date with the latest developments in JavaScript.
      - gress 12y ago
        Even if you are right, and I'd only grant you that I am partially wrong about java because the JCP has collapsed since the Oracle takeover - the rest are just you adding qualifiers to minimize the contradiction, so what? Your position is simply to dismiss the value of standards and state that it's fine that Dart is proprietary. Also your statement about ECMAScript is flat out disingenuous. JavaScript implementations may move ahead between ECMAScript standards, but it is standardized, and by a real cross-industry group, not just a rubber stamp from one company. It is hard to take seriously an assertion that the level of standardization between Dart and JavaScript is comparable.
spankalee 12y ago
Well, we have ECMA TC52 which will hopefully ratify the specification pretty soon.
cpeterso 12y ago
But proprietary in the sense of that there is only one implementation and it is maintained by one company (Google).
- tomp 12y ago
  It's always available to be forked. By the same standards, Ubuntu is proprietary, as is Firefox.
  - gress 12y ago
    A forked programming language is no longer the same language.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]

_random_ 12y ago

That's not a big deal. Browsers are in a desperate need for a non-transpiled client-side language competition.

gress 12y ago
It's the lack of competition that makes it a problem.

spankalee 12y ago

There aren't that many languages that aren't "proprietary" in some way or another at their beginnings. C, Java, JavaScript, Rust, Go, Swift, Python, Perl, Ruby, Clojure, TypeScript... on and on. Haskell is one of the few modern languages I know of where a language was birthed in committee. ALGOL and COBOL are some older examples.