Much like android dart is controlled by a small group of engineers in Google. Where's the source code to the current HEAD of dart? I'm pretty sure it's not on GitHub. What features are planned for the next release? I'm fairly sure dart-discuss doesn't exist publicly.
Dark doesn't belong to the web developer community. No conspiracy theory needed, dart is built to suit googles purposes, which is fine. The only thing is expecting people to use it and think its a successor to JS, which, for all the flaws of JS, it is not.
Google know what a community developed successor to JS looks like. Optional strong typing in even MS typescript is more popular than dart. Get together with the community or dart will be he next GWT.
Most of the work is done completely in the open. See some of the language discussion writeups: https://groups.google.com/a/dartlang.org/forum/#!searchin/mi...
We went public two years ago when the language was still in its infancy so that developers could provide their feedback.
Edit: contrary to your claim we did get feedback and acted on it. Some changes were rejected (like putting the types behind the variables), but it's normal that not every request can be accepted.
If you have suggestions on how we can make Dart even more open-source I would be genuinely interested in hearing them.
The most popular feedback from HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3092558 and Twitter was was less verbose syntax. AFAICT dart remains as chatty as the day it was announced.
Syntax is almost like a religion. You can't make everyone happy. So yes: although we changed the syntax in some areas, we kept the C-like syntax.
Fwiw you can't satisfy every feedback. There are always people that want to make Dart look and behave like their favorite language (be it Java, C#, JS, CS, Python or Ruby), then there are others that just want to boycott Dart, and finally there are simply conflicting views.
While we listened to every feedback we got, we found that feedback from people that had actually tried and used Dart to be the most helpful. They weren't always the loudest, but helped to make Dart a better language.
Nobody is asking you to make everyone happy. You could have made (and still have the opportunity to make) dart look like any modern web language - coffeescript, or Python, or ruby, and you'd have both users and a measurable impact on web development.
It's pretty damn concise and a far sight from Java. It's more concise in many cases than JavaScript (and only more verbose around things like type coercion where being explicit is a much safer choice). I admit though, that Dart is more verbose than Perl :)
C-style syntax doesn't have to mean verbose when you have features like short lambdas, optional types, string interpolation, operator overriding, getters and setters, setting instance vars directly from constructor parameters, fewer keywords, mixins, etc. C-style syntax also makes the language pretty much instantly readable, and if you're targeting web developers, being familiar to JavaScript, Java, C#, and ActionScript, is really important.
Honestly, Dart is the most readable language I've used, and that includes many years writing Python.
[disclaimer: I work on the Dart team]
This is simply not true! I've been following the language for a long time and they have made a lot of changes, they have listened to feedback. Just search 'BREAKING CHANGE' on the mailing lists. During the first year there were tons of changes to the language and libraries. Now they trying to stabilize the APIs
The designers have also made it very clear that the types next to a variable are basically useless at runtime (unless you turn on strict mode, which kills performance). Types are for tooling only, which seems silly.
But this is HN, it is easier to rant about how evil Dart Wader will destroy the beautiful Javascriptalderaan.
All but Dartium. Even Chrome doesn't support it natively yet.
> Dart's type system is basically just the Closure JsDoc system used by the Closure compiler.
Yes, it's basically something like that. The difference is that it's terser and far more convenient to use. Since it's baked into the language, it's standardized and properly supported by all tools.
Another difference is that you immediately benefit from putting those annotations at the boundaries. You get the checks and call-tips right off the bat.
> Dart is really just another Coffeescript
No, Dart and TypeScript offer proper tooling. CS doesn't.
Dart also offers much nicer semantics.
> One of the benefits of development in JavaScript is you can simply refresh your browser and it just works.
Same with Dart. You just use Dartium during development.
It did not happen BECAUSE of Microsoft (Adobe pushed FOR it, Mozilla got cold feet).
Not only that, implement it right away in the JS engines..
Javascript must move faster, because even that people are being forced to like it(because they dont have anywhere to hide); everything has limits.. everybody knows that we cant go on with the javascript the way it is right know and pretends everything its just fine and its all roses and unicorns..
Im trying to create something new here that will need an embedded VM, and deciding between JS, Lua or Dart is just killing me.. if that was an option, and the next javascript was just something like typescript.. this would be a easy decision
To the much more important point, the development of important features stalled for AngularJS as the team was busy working on Dart version. This is the main problem.
Not true. Google grew the team. Take a look at the activity on Github. The velocity has been consistently high throughout the development of the Dart fork: https://github.com/angular/angular.js/pulse
If there was some important feature you wanted, you are always able to submit a PR yourself. That's how open source works.
It's being designed as a javascript replacement. Google's overbearing intention is obvious.
You're right: Dart is, functionally, another CoffeeScript, but that's despite Google's plan--ok, 'experiment'--not by design.
>So, please, can we discuss this on its merits
Your criticisms are shared. That's what causes the friction: resentment that a pretty flawed language is being pushed. Dart does take time away from other more worthwhile projects.
None of the cynicism is over wishing that Google would stop experimenting with technology, it's over Google's waste of time.
Edit: Actually, apparently there might be a formalized 'grand plan,' reading nateabele.
Open? Dart has been open-sourced for 2 years now - only having its proof-of-concept done in-house before the announcement.
Cheerful? Not sure how one language that compiles to JS is more "cheerful" than an other, but we're really a cheerful bunch in person. I'm sure you could have a beer with us if you'd like :)
As to the your and the OP's point about Dart being another CoffeeScript, this is really far from reality. CoffeeScript is just syntax changes, and that's not sufficient for fixing JavaScript major problems - which come form its semantics, not it's syntax.
Dart and CoffeeScript are actually quite far apart on the spectrum of compile-to-JS languages: Dart tries to keep a similar syntax and fix the semantics, CoffeeScript tries to keep the semantics and "fix" the syntax (I personally find CoffeeScript very hard to read). Claiming that Dart is another CoffeeScript, to me, shows a real lack of knowledge about one or both of the languages.
So, people are naturally suspicious. CoffeeScript doesn't have this vibe, to me at least. It's made by a team of people across companies (although I think it is sponsored partially by The New York Times Company?) and there is a lot of community which lives outside a specific company's ecosystem.
That said, it could just be my own personal bias, having used coffee script extensively and not used Dart much at all.
[1] http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/11/google-just-pulled-a-...
Yet, CoffeeScript is not just a different syntax - for one, it changes declarations and scoping rules. That's a pretty big semantic change (comparison operators etc. follow).
You might not be involved enough in the politics of programmer mindshare, but plainly: Dart is attempting a takeover.
Takeovers can be smiles and open source, but they're still takeovers, and this one is doomed to fail.
If you don't see that, you're focused on the work in front of you and (again) not on the politics of technology. Which is fine. I'm sure it would be lovely to have a beer with you, and talk languages and compiler design well into the next day's hangover.
But if you're going to get involved with a conversation on politics, you should think about Google's goals with Dart and whether they're reasonable or beneficial.
General sentiment here? They're neither.
I joined the Dart team because I thought is was a worthy and important project that could beneficially impact a very large number of people. I _do_ think about these things, they're quite important to me. The goals of more sane semantics, more optimizable structure, and better toolability and tools are to me, and a lot of other engineers, incredibly reasonable and beneficial. That's actually the entire point of the project is to be more reasonable and beneficial than the alternatives :)
If fact, I think I'll use that as my informal Dart tagline: "Dart, reasonable and beneficial!"
More seriously, Dart is created by people who think that JS is broken and we need an alternative. I hope you're not claiming that that's really an unreasonable opinion, and that the only reasonable point of view is that JavaScript should always be the only language used to develop web applications. I'm sure reasonable people can disagree about the degree of brokenness of JavaScript, and about different solutions to the problems.
Developers aren't flocking to Dart. Many are resentful of it.
You can ignore the resentment and the reasoning behind it if you want, but that won't make Dart more reasonable or beneficial.
In all of your condescending[1] comments, you have forgotten to actually articulate what your reasoning is. These are as close as you got:
Dart doesn't have the open, cheerful intentions
Google's overbearing intention is obvious
flawed language
this one is doomed to fail
forced down our throat
---
I think my reasoning throughout this page has been more or less articulated, but I suppose I might try for a compact representation.
What exactly do you think is going to happen with Dart?
Is Google going to add Dart to every Chrome install? Sure, maybe. Will so many developers cry out that Safari and IE will also be forced to implement Dart runtimes?
Is every single browser going to run Dart because Dart will have made such a compelling case that it and it alone is preferable to javascript?
Why not python? Why not C, Java, Scala? We could be running those languages in browsers just as easily as we might run Dart.
Do you think Dart is that amazing? Do you think Dart is just so wonderful that it'll unite the programming world as never before?
No.
Even Google's pet framework is divided and recoiling.
The problem isn't that Dart has to compete with javascript, it's that it has to compete with every other language out there, and it's just not that special. Why Dart? If we're going to be serious about ripping up browsers, why Dart?
Now, I maybe should make it more clear: I don't have any problem with Dart as an experiment, Dart as a transpiled language, or even Angular.dart.
But Google doesn't get to decide the future of the web just because it has a bunch of fancy language designers. Google is trying to shove Dart down our throats, and it's not working, and it's not going to work.
Dart will remain a transpiled-to-js language for a time, and then fall off the radar when it's clear that it doesn't transpile to js very well. The alternative is a fantasy.
> Do you think Dart is that amazing? Do you think Dart is just so wonderful that it'll unite the programming world as never before?
The world isn't black and white. Dart doesn't have to be perfect to be a viable alternative to JS.
> Even Google's pet framework is divided and recoiling.
No, they both thrive and benefit from the other. It is a feature. The same thing is happening with Polymer.
> Why Dart?
Take a cursory look and you'll find some arguments for Dart but I would think you would have covered this before having such a strong opinion.
> Google is trying to shove Dart down our throats
Said multiple times. Substantiate please.
> fall off the radar when it's clear that it doesn't transpile to js very well. The alternative is a fantasy.
So you know more about dart2js capabilities than the creators of V8 and Dart? This is the condescending and arrogant attitude I spoke of.
I was echoing OP (the one who was bemoaning snark and cynicism). Read his paragraphs. Flawed doesn't mean crippled. There are things about Dart I like.
A language can't be perfect.
>No, they both thrive and benefit from the other.
Pay attention to negative feedback. Some substantial portion of AngularJS devs are unhappy.
>Take a cursory look and you'll find some arguments for Dart
I'm not arguing for Dart's existence here, I'm saying Dart has absolutely no chance of securing the browser's runtime over javascript. Why Dart, why not Go?
>So you know more about dart2js capabilities than the creators of V8 and Dart?
https://github.com/jbdeboer/angular-dart-js-size/blob/master...
173KB. This is ridiculous.
Say whatever you want about benchmarks, Angular.dart is either a terrible port (quite possible) or Dart's transpiler isn't on the level of CoffeeScript or TypeScript.
>This is the condescending and arrogant attitude I spoke of.
I'm asserting something grand and sweeping that I think to be true. Get over it or walk away.
Define "substantial". I've seen some complaints here that AngularDart has, and will, take away from AngularJS, which, again, is unsubstantiated. It's counter to the evidence and the likelihood that the groups working together will make both better.
> I'm not arguing for Dart's existence here, I'm saying Dart has absolutely no chance of securing the browser's runtime over javascript.
Uh, you've expressed "cynicism [...] over Google's waste of time" and called Dart "pretty flawed", which you haven't substantiated yet. If your were merely expressing skepticism over Dart "securing the browser's runtime over javascript", there wouldn't be a discussion here. Brendan Eich did that for you a long time ago. I'd contend that it doesn't really matter as long as dart2js can fulfill its goals; however, I'd still maintain a wait-and-see attitude about how we'll see DartVM used. There are some very interesting possibilities.
> 173KB. This is ridiculous.
Substance! Thank you. Dart is pre-1.0. It's being worked on. Also, notice at the bottom of that page:
We want your help, especially if you can make update
@MirrorsUsed in main.dart to generate a smaller binary.
No, I won't. The attitude isn't conducive to civil discourse and not welcome here so I'll continue calling it out where I see it. I'll take the upvotes as confirmation that others agree with me.
You've got your unsubstantiated opinions and will continue making these "sweeping" claims so there's no point in continuing here. It leaves little room for meaningful discussion, unfortunately.
Typescript is pre-1.0.
It's telling, to me, that the first argument of mine you take seriously you handwave over by vaguely saying it will get better and it can be fixed.
I'd place a bet that Dart is about as good as it is ever going to be.
>I'll take the upvotes as confirmation that others agree with me.
Sorry to disappoint you, but I've got upvotes, too.
>The attitude isn't conducive to civil discourse and not welcome here so I'll continue calling it out where I see it.
Whatever floats your pompous self-righteous boat.
I may be curt, strident, and critical, but you don't really have high ground when it comes to condescension. You went straight to childish insults. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6679901
When I disagree with someone I don't directly call them stupid or immature. (Well, usually.) I may speak and act as if something I believe strongly is obvious, and I may not mask my disdain for the ideas expressed. There's nothing wrong with being wrong, but I'm not going to hide the fact that I think you're wrong.
You seem to have a problem that someone a) disagrees with you, and b) says so confidently and forcefully. Again, get over it or walk away. If I'm so wrong and so boorish, you are under no contract to continue.
You can't change me and I am not your responsibility.
Fortunately I think you've finally clued in ("so there's no point in continuing here"). I've certainly spent enough time on this. Later.
> I may be curt, strident, and critical, but you don't really have high ground when it comes to condescension. You went straight to childish insults. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6679901
Not me. Try again.
Edit: Mind you, you're still self-righteous and pompous, but you're not hypocritical about it. :P
Dart is a great language, I like it. It has consistent typing rules, very fast, has a good IDE. I for one, would like to thank Google for working on it and open sourcing it.
But I don't have any problem with Dart as an experiment in language design. I don't even really have any problem with Angular.dart.
We can always use another language that transpiles down to javascript. People are free to use what they want. (Unfortunately, my understanding is the dart2js process is horrifically inefficient, but that's no skin off my nose.)
I will, however, drive home the point that Dart cannot out-compete CoffeeScript or TypeScript; Dart will not replace javascript and will not be the native language of the web.
There's nothing to distinguish it from any other language, and it has to deal with backlash like this.
I'm personally happy that there's still hope we have a future option for a re-invented language optimized for web development rather relying on the glacial pace of continually patching JS to make it more maintainable.
It's a small yet powerfully expressive language that's easy to learn, it's very well thought-out and balanced providing greater consistency in both language and library behavior which is a nice contrast to the dump of incompatible JS fx's, it's optional typing adds a lot less friction and is a lot more productive that statically-typed langs, but also provides time-saving compiler feedback alerting errors as you type. It's support for source-maps are best-in-class whilst Dartium provides strong tool-ability and debug support and very fast live-reload cycles. Dart is an awesome option even without considering it's ~10x faster start-up times with Snapshots or its fast run-time performance which sees it can solve the Norvig's top95 Sudoku grids 200x times faster than Ruby: https://github.com/dartist/sudoku_solver#side-by-side-result...
Dart's not perfect and there are some language features I wish it had but over-all I think it's a magnitude better option than vanilla JS. It currently has less momentum than JS, but I hope to see that change as a JS-only future ensures web development will be forever stuck in the middle-ages.
How are you driving it home besides just repeating it without any other supporting statements? Saying something 3 times doesn't make it truer.
> Dart will not replace javascript and will not be the native language of the web
Still don't get why it wouldn't. What is qualitatively different about DartVM vs v8. It could be 2-3 development cycles away from inclusion should Google decide to do it. What exactly code-wise is preventing that to happen?
> Unfortunately, my understanding is the dart2js process is horrifically inefficient, but that's no skin off my nose.)
Looking at their benchmarks their dart2js is not too far off v8 numbers. Now add types plus a nice IDE and I can see how a larger project might choose instead of JS.
What is the pathway for Dart adoption? Google puts it in Chrome. Sure. Dart programmers get to deploy to the Chrome browser, so they do some fun side projects and they run on Chrome only. Fine.
Show me how Dart can then move to every browser on every device.
Then show me how whatever hypothetical process you came up with doesn't apply to any other language that currently exists.
If we're going to put a new runtime in the browser, Dart isn't the only option.
dart2js: https://www.dartlang.org/docs/dart-up-and-running/contents/c...
Yes, it is. But I'm not sure why you're viewing that as something negative.
It addresses the kind of problems everyone encounters when they try to write bigger applications in JavaScript.
GWT and the Closure Compiler also did this kind of thing. Dart does the same, but in a far more elegant manner. It's terser and the workflow is far more streamlined.
Having proper tooling is really great. Also, thanks to the type annotations you'll need fewer tests, you get better documentation, and it also acts as a safety net for refactoring/maintenance work.
It will enable more people (myself included) to write larger high-quality web applications.
Please.
> That's what causes the friction: resentment that a pretty flawed language is being pushed.
"flawed language" you mean [] + [] doesn't equal '' ?
Oh look it throws a "TypeError: Object #<JSArray> has no method '$add'", yes please bring more such flawed languages around Google, I love them!
Whoever thinks this is part of some grand plan to force Dart down our throats clearly has no clue whatsoever about how Google works.
Standard disclaimer: I'm a Google engineer and these opinions are my own and don't reflect those of my employer.
Google is a really large company with >10,000 engineers. A lot of what we do starts as grassroots efforts. Honestly, getting 10,000 engineers to act in a coordinated fashion is probably like trying to herd 10,000 cats.
AngularJS started as a side project that became Google-sponsored and it grew organically. Being Google-sponsored simply means some team somewhere has dedicated some engineers to working on it. That's it.
Likewise a group of engineers separately started Dart due to dissatisfaction with JavaScript being the lingua franca of the Web. The idea was that Dart can be implemented as a VM within a browser and get faster performance that way. Likewise, it should compile to JavaScript for browsers that don't support Dart in the browser (which is all of them except Chrome). Also, Dart shares a lot of the philosophies of GWT in sharing code between client and server.
Now my personal view is that I honestly don't see the point of Dart. I mean no disrespect to the team or their efforts but I don't agree with the premise or the design philosophy of Dart.
Optional typing seems to me to combine the worst of both worlds. If typing is useful (as the static typers will argue) then be statically typed. If it's not be dynamically typed. Dart's type system is basically just the Closure JsDoc system used by the Closure compiler. That's it. To me, there's no real innovation there.
Dart is really just another Coffeescript and I don't see the point of Coffeescript either.
One of the benefits of development in JavaScript is you can simply refresh your browser and it just works. I'm a huge fan of this fast iteration cycle in development. It's the same reason I'm a fan of Python, Ruby and even PHP.
Additionally, as soon as you add a translation step from something to JavaScript, you introduce potential bugs in that translation (eg I've seen bugs with the Closure compiler incorrectly removed code it thought was dead and that was JS to JS let alone the issues with, say, GWT's Java to JS). Even if there aren't bugs, tracing issues back to the source becomes more difficult.
Rob Pike through Go seems to believe this too (not that I claim to speak for him) because he's repeatedly mentioned that the simple syntax of Go and fast compilation is a deliberate feature, a philosophy I agree with 100%. It's also one reason I detest C++: slow compilation kills productivity (IMHO).
So AngularDart is nothing more than another group of engineers (perhaps there's a crossover with the Dart folks) wants a modern Web framework for client-side Dart so they created one.
The idea that this is part of some grand strategy is quite frankly ludicrous.
Google puts their effort behind a lot of experimental projects. Some work out, many don't. Will Dart succeed? I don't presume to know. But while I don't agree with the premise/philosophy it makes me happy that the company I work for is still prepared to experiment with such efforts and devote resources to them.
If you work at Google you'll often see three teams working on roughly the same thing, typically without knowing about the existence of the others. They may consolidate or compete (if they have incompatible philosophies that the teams feel strongly about) or something in between.
This happens because so many efforts just start out as a single engineer or a small group of engineers just trying something out or they want to solve a problem they see (and in an organization this large it's rare you're the only one who sees a particular problem and wants to do something about it).
So, please, can we discuss this on its merits rather than the new norm of seeing vast conspiracies or simply seeing things as some collusion with the NSA. It's really tiresome.
EDIT: added a paragraph about the issues of bugs and translating something to javaScript.