Dart is practically a DOA project, just like NaCl. These projects failed for the same reasons - they were trying to radically change how you built software on the web, and the world was absolutely not ready for it. DART was going to be a separate VM in your browser and, of course, only Chrome supported it. It never could have succeeded in that role.

No language has usurped Javascript for frontend, and the only two approaches that may work are:

a) Typescript, which intends to be very close to javascript

b) Webassembly, which has taken years to get off the ground

Go didn't have that problem to contend with. I don't think it's fair to say that because Dart failed to take off quickly that proves that Google isn't the main reason for Go's success.

edit: I see lots of "Dart is a counterexample" posts. It really shouldn't be considered one.

Also I think that Go didn't come out of nowhere. It is closely related to past languages that were used in production and research, like C or Limbo.

Of course Dart adopts a lot of concepts people love from other languages. But to me it feels really artificial and disconnected from what developers successfully used in the past. It maybe worked in the 70s that people came up with a completely new language and people used it because there was nothing else.

I mean I agree that Dart is DOA, but Flutter is the "killer app" for it and that's in its infancy right now.

Dart has gained more success since moving away from the "new browser language", which was an impossible task in retrospect.

I think Dart is, in fact, an excellent example of how much power Google is willing to throw behind a language. Dart was constantly marketed on the Chrome blog, for example.

Nah, why do you think Android now has JetPack Compose?

https://developer.android.com/jetpack/compose

Do you think Android team would just stand still with people nagging them about Flutter?