Sorry, I'm not trying to say that google isn't currently heavily using dart. Rather, that between Dart's initial release (released in 2013) and the release of flutter (released 2017) Dart was practically dead.

That's the period that left a bad taste in my mouth. IDK who chose to use Dart for flutter, but by doing so they revived a basically dead language.

Dart tried to be a Web language through Chrome, but it failed [1]. And I think it was a good call. It felt dead at that point because it was lost. Flutter feels more like a miracle that had no reason to succeed (at first).

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2015/03/25/google-will-not-integrate-...

[I lead Dart eng.]

Sorry you had poor experiences. :-(

That said, it was true that Dart was used heavily internally in that time frame. It was and still is, by Ads (ads.google.com) - that's a non-Flutter Dart app and still (to the best of my knowledge) the largest Dart app around. Before Flutter, we went through a period of primarily prioritizing internal customers. That work was often not visible externally.

We did do the shift to Dart 2 in that time period though. That was a fairly massive change to the language that began independently of Flutter. It was a nice timing that Dart 2 shipped at the same time as Flutter 1.

> That work was often not visible externally.

Let me be blunt, the work was never visible externally. What was visible externally is major language designers leaving the team (Lars Bak), Updates to the language slowing or stopping all together, the chrome team deciding to abandon dartvm in chrome, the angular team deciding to use typescript for angular 2.0, and Dart angular being abandoned (even as it was still being advertised on dart.dev!).

What other conclusion was an outsider to draw other than "Ok, google must be done with dart"?

What was the plan if flutter never happened? Would google ads continue to use dart?

Like I said, happy that you and your team are now enjoying some nice popularity. I jumped on dart early because I thought it was overall a good idea and decent language. However, once bitten, twice shy.

The odds are very good that Lars would have left regardless of how Dart was doing. He has repeatedly told me "I'm a 1.0 guy". He likes shipping new things but he's not the kind of person to spend a decade cultivating an ecosystem and refactoring mature codebases.

I'm really sorry you got burned by the early experience. It was a hard time for Dart users. It was a hard time on the team too. It felt like we were wandering in the wilderness for a while and struggling to agree on what language our users wanted us to build for them.

I think where we've landed is a much better product, but I'm sorry that our churn getting there caused you pain.

> It felt like we were wandering in the wilderness for a while and struggling to agree on what language our users wanted us to build for them.

And I really appreciate you saying this. I get that what I'm saying is harsh and probably comes off as whiny/ungrateful. I'm mostly just venting because of the original "Why are people mad about dart in HN" comment and explaining my position there.

Dart does look like it's moving forward in a good direction and I wish it all the best. It's certainly great that the language and ecosystem are seeing a fair bit more adoption.

I hope that if you try it again some time, you have a better experience.

This is precisely my take, as well. I got burnt by Angular Dart and the Dart VM, so I'm extremely reluctant to try out Flutter. I've only got so much time on this earth and I don't want to keep investing it in Google's abandonware.

Yeah I remember Google's attempt at Dartium and thought that it was dead when that was scrapped (I didn't realise Angular Dart was even a thing).

I was surprised to see Dart 2.0 come out and Dart 3.0 has surprised me even more.

As long as hardly anyone is using Dart outside of Google, it will remain a niche language.

And based on Google's track record, Dart is at risk of being cancelled any day without any notice.