Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Google Starts to Detail Dart

Posted by samzenpus on from the a-look-under-the-hood dept.

MrSeb writes "After waiting for more than a month, Google has unveiled its mysterious Dart programming language... and you're going to kick yourself for getting so preemptively excited. Dart is a new programming language that looks like Java, acts a lot like Java, runs inside a virtual machine like Java... but ominously, it also has a tool that converts Dart code into JavaScript. Language-wise, its features are unlikely to knot your panties: there are classes and interfaces, it is optionally typed (you can switch between untyped prototype code to an enterprise app with typing), the syntax is very lackluster, there's a very strong concurrency model, and Google is promising lots of juicy libraries that can be leveraged by developers. Basically, the language isn't meant to be exciting: in Google's own words, it's designed to be 'familiar and natural' — and indeed, if you write Java or C# code, Dart will probably feel very approachable."

3 of 219 comments (clear)

  1. It's not a bad thing by i+kan+reed · · Score: 4, Informative

    The world actually needs more "enterprisey" languages. If you want experimental, fun languages, your choices are actually very good, what with ruby, python, and a ton of functional languages. In terms of safe and good for scalable, risk-averse environments, there's pretty much just Java and C#. Java seems to have accumulated so much inertia, it doesn't add new features anymore. As for C#, the problems dealing with Microsoft are well-known to the slashdot community already.

    A little more competition in that arena would do the industry some good.

  2. Re:In short by Sunday_Ironfoot · · Score: 3, Informative

    Java = Statically, strongly typed language (like C# .NET) with classical inheritance, compile time safety etc.
    JavaScript = Dynamically typed language with first class functions with prototypal based inheritance, some runtime safety
    Dart = Dynamically typed language with first classes functions, but with some support for static types & classical inheritance, still runtime safety/error checking, no compiling etc.

    Dart is more like JavaScript than Java. It's been touted as a JavaScript replacement, not Java. Although, just like JavaScript and Java, it can be used for more than just browser based client-side web apps.

  3. Re:Whoa there by Raenex · · Score: 5, Informative

    The difference is that Google have pretty much a clean track record when it comes to open source software.

    I don't think so. Chrome was marketed as an open source browser, yet from the very first release they added in proprietary bits without source code. It's nice that it is almost open source, and that Chromium exists, but it's important to note they compromised on open source principles.

    This continues now with Android, with Google releasing Honeycomb for their partners without releasing the corresponding source code. I don't care what excuses Google gave for that, no source code is no source code.

    Google cannot be trusted. They are a big corporation looking out for their own interests. Sure, they play nice for the most part, but many times they don't.