Re:Why Google thinks you should drop everything you do and p...
by mpweiher on Sunday September 07, 2014 @03:37PM
(#8282144)
Semantically, Dart is pretty much Smalltalk, so it's actually a useful, reasonably well-thought-out language with sane semantics. A bit of a shame about the syntax...
It even has doesNotUnderstand:, so it's quite extensible.
The optional typing is neat: you can have a type error and the program won't just compile, it will continue to run! There's a video of Gilad demonstrating this in a live coding environment: he changes the type of a variable that's a number to String and apart from the compiler now complaining, nothing changes.
The isolates concept also seems well-thought out, with separate heaps and the only interaction via messaging. Nothing breathtakingly new, but I think they picked up the right thing and implemented it well.
The fact that the semantics are sane means the compiler can create faster code than JS with fewer heroics (if it isn't compiled via JS).
It even has doesNotUnderstand:, so it's quite extensible.
The optional typing is neat: you can have a type error and the program won't just compile, it will continue to run! There's a video of Gilad demonstrating this in a live coding environment: he changes the type of a variable that's a number to String and apart from the compiler now complaining, nothing changes.
The isolates concept also seems well-thought out, with separate heaps and the only interaction via messaging. Nothing breathtakingly new, but I think they picked up the right thing and implemented it well.
The fact that the semantics are sane means the compiler can create faster code than JS with fewer heroics (if it isn't compiled via JS).