Dart 1.0 Released

stoolpigeon writes "Yesterday marked the release of Dart SDK 1.0, a cross-browser, open source toolkit for structured web applications. The Dart SDK 1.0 includes everything you need to write structured web applications: a simple yet powerful programming language, robust tools, and comprehensive core libraries. The language has been somewhat controversial, but Google continues to move it forward." Reader slack_justyb adds some more detail: "The new release brings a much tighter dart2js compiler reducing overall JavaScript output up to 40%; Dartium — a version of Google Chrome that has the DartVM in addition to the JavaScript VM as native to the browser; PUB, a package manager for Dart add-ons; and several favorite 3rd party plug-ins that now come out-of-box, in addition to a lot of work for Dart server-side tools that can work to automate server side tasks and help in the construction of web pages. However Dart has many critics not only from the IE and Apple camps, as one would guess, but from the Firefox and Opera camps as well. In addition to the low adoption of Dart from third parties there are some asking where does Dart go from here? Especially considering that Google is one of the strongest pushers for EcmaScript 6."

Comments

It's a good idea to try it.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you've used JS in the past you'll see immediately why DART is so welcome. It's actually SANE!

My productivity is probably 200% greater in DART then JS. But don't take my word for it, I'm jsut an ana coward!

Re:It's a good idea to try it.

[Anonymous Coward]

JS being insane is only half the problem. The bigger problem is major browser manufacturers who insisting on pushing a new version every bloody month, with each new version breaking something in existing JS code. As web developers we need to get together and make these douchebags not come out with new versions more often than once every 2 years (security fixes excepted).

Re:It's a good idea to try it.

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess all the people that use JavaScript for fun on GitHub are morons?

Yes

Re:It's a good idea to try it.

[Joce640k]

I guess all the people that use JavaScript for fun on GitHub are morons?

There's an old saw about "millions of flies..." that might be applied here.

The number of diners doesn't always reflect the quality of the cuisine.

Re:It's a good idea to try it.

[aztracker1]

I'm not sure what you are referring to... for the most part extensions to JS the language have been fairly limited in scope... Some of the ES6 stuff being an exception, that has been a work in progress for some time. Most of the ES5 extensions can be shimmed in, and are often abstracted via utility libraries like lodash. The *language* of JavaScript is *NOT* the Document Object Model (DOM) of the browser... People tend to conflate the two, but it's just not the same thing.

Re:It's a good idea to try it.

[TechyImmigrant]

>The *language* of JavaScript is *NOT* the Document Object Model (DOM) of the browser... People tend to conflate the two, but it's just not the same thing.

But you never get to deal with one without the other. They are joined at the hip and the hip is badly dislocated.

Re:It's a good idea to try it.

[Anonymous Coward]

"There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses".
    -- Bjarne Stroustrup

Re:It's a good idea to try it.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, JavaScript is objectively awful as a general purpose language. For example, using callbacks for event handling is 100% objectively awful--this is why the CompSci gods invented coroutines. C, C++ and Java don't have coroutines, but then again event handling is central to their problem domai. (I do hate it when people use callbacks in these languages, too. A substantial number of hard-to-fix bugs in both desktop and network software relates to the intersection of callbacks and threads--callbacks obscure program flow, and threads exploit this blind-spot to crash your program.)

I think alot of people overstate how bad JavaScript is. But make no mistake about it, it is ugly. Most things would be easily fixable, but it's too late.

However, JavaScript is a known quantity, it definitely has lots of good parts (object prototyping is nice; this is how we roll in Lua, as well), and in many ways it's the most portable language in current use, excepting maybe C.

Re:It's a good idea to try it.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you switched to a different language that still uses the DOM API, you will still have all the problems with DOM. If you came up with an alternative API, then you could just implement it in JS. They are not joined at hip at all. The only reason they come up together is because there are not any practical alternatives for a lot of web development cases (or because the developer is unaware of alternatives).

If you sat down at a meal where you were given only one horrible choice of food, and were told the only available utensil is a fork, that doesn't suddenly mean forks are inherently connected to bad food. If you were given a spoon, it would taste just as bad. If you made the food taste better, you could continue to use the fork.

Re:It's a good idea to try it.

[TechyImmigrant]

>The only reason they come up together is because there are not any practical alternatives for a lot of web development cases

Which was my point.

Re:It's a good idea to try it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Javescript had coroutine support since version 1.7, as implemented in in Firefox 2...

I think alot of people overstate how bad JavaScript is.

I know how you feel.

Re:It's a good idea to try it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Then your point was meaningless. If you treat JS and the DOM as the same thing, you can't find any insight into how to actually fix any problems, or at best, end up being off-topic when discussing an alternative language.

Re:It's a good idea to try it.

[TechyImmigrant]

You are claiming I claimed something I didn't claim. At no point did I claim they were the same thing. I said they were connected, which they are.
My point was completely on topic. The topic was the assertion that JS and DOM are independent. My assertion that for all practical purposes they are not.

That you could replace JS with a different language is irrelevant. The combination of +DOM would still stink because DOM stinks.

Re:It's a good idea to try it.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Your Java version should have the same bit width as your Dart Editor version."

Whoa ! Stop the presses !!!

Re:It's a good idea to try it.

[aztracker1]

Well, there are JS bindings (V8 and SpiderMonkey) for a number of platforms/environments... from NodeJS, Synchronet, GLUEscript, and others... the language is actually fairly broadly available outside of the DOM.

Re:It's a good idea to try it.

[aztracker1]

But.. you can use JS outside of the browser.

Re:It's a good idea to try it.

[Anonymous Coward]

That is a self-serving statement meant to deflect responsibility of all the legitimate criticism that C++ deserves.

Re:It's a good idea to try it.

[TechyImmigrant]

But I could use a better language outside of the browser. JS isn't a terrible language, but it's no Python.

Dart2JS is faster than JS?! whatever

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems rather imbicilic to say that Dart2JS is faster than JS.

Re:Dart2JS is faster than JS?! whatever

[Anonymous Coward]

Dart2JS generetes 40% less JS code than it previously did. It never claimed to generate faster JS that writing straight JS.

Re:Dart2JS is faster than JS?! whatever

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems rather imbicilic to say that Dart2JS is faster than JS.

Let me bing that for you...

Re:Dart2JS is faster than JS?! whatever

[Anonymous Coward]

Please, don't do that in front of the kids, that's gross.

Re:Dart2JS is faster than JS?! whatever

[Blaskowicz]

It's rather imbecillic to handwave it without providing any reasoning behind it. Look what Mozilla is doing with asm.js and "compile to javascript" compilers.. You can compile a high level language to a low level, restricted subset of javascript which then runs very fast in the browsers's JIT engines. Doesn't sound too great maybe but the resulting execution speed can possibly be better than by using javascript's high level features and libraries instead.

Re:Dart2JS is faster than JS?! whatever

[Anonymous Coward]

Your search revealed nothing except a lot of non-related items or hand-wavy-ness. Thanks a lot fanboy. (Bing on slashdot? really?)

Re:Dart2JS is faster than JS?! whatever

[slack_justyb]

That is correct. When writing my piece for the story I wanted to ensure that I conveyed the correct idea that the Dart2JS compiler now generates up to 40% less JavaScript than previous versions of Dart2JS, not that the JavaScript itself that it generates is 40% faster.

As far as speed goes, there is all kinds of data on that facet on the Dart website. That will no less generate large amounts of debate about the figures presented by Google about Dart's performance. Just for the comedy of it, dart2js may generate less JavaScript, but will generate at least 60% more debate about its use.

If I was not clear on the whole point by this part of the story:

The new release brings a much tighter dart2js compiler reducing overall JavaScript output up to 40%

Then it was an honest mistake. I work with computers not the English language. :-)

Re:Dart2JS is faster than JS?! whatever

[Vanderhoth]

I think he was being facetious and the point was to show how poorly Bing actually works. That was my take on reading the returned results anyway.

Re:Dart2JS is faster than JS?! whatever

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the article. Look at the graphs. That is exactly what they claim.

Re:Dart2JS is faster than JS?! whatever

[Joce640k]

Dart2JS generetes 40% less JS code than it previously did.

Is that good or bad?

If it used to generate code that was megabloated then trimming it down to merely 'humongous' isn't much use.

Re:Dart2JS is faster than JS?! whatever

[AC-x]

Next you'll be telling us that an optimising C compiler can't create faster code than readable hand-written ASM...

Re:Dart2JS is faster than JS?! whatever

[Anonymous Coward]

It used to generate that years ago in a first alpha version. But that is the only thing you ever heard, and of course you assume you never, ever need to check up on anything because you are such a damn genius.

Re:Dart2JS is faster than JS?! whatever

[Anonymous Coward]

Both Dart and JavaScript are High Level languages as opposed to C (a low level) outputting ASM (a very low level).

Most of the constructs output by dart2js into a high level language like javascript will readily be possible to hand code in a similar manner.

The C/ASM anology may or may not hold for dart2js/JS. Showing a graph that says that dart2js is faster than js seems to indicate they didn't take time to write their js properly.

Re:Dart2JS is faster than JS?! whatever

[Anonymous Coward]

C is actually a rather high-level language. Just because people abuse the language (violating the language specification) and often get away with it doesn't make it a low-level language. That practical aspect of it is a love-it-or-hate it thing, but it really has nothing to do with the language, per se, just various implementations of it.

What are low-level languages, anyhow? I can't even think of any. People too often conflate the implementation with the language specification. In fact, that's usually what really matters---the implementation. That's why there are a billion languages, almost all of them nearly identical for all practical purposes, with the only substantive distinction being the fact that each group wrote their implementation, and so are comfortable tweaking things at that level.

I mean, seriously, look at Rust, Dart, Java, D... what really separates these languages are their implementations. The various syntactical differences would be easily adopted by each language, notwithstanding pushback from the implementation authors.

Many other languages, such as Go or Erlang, hang their hat on communication primitives, but that's not that novel, either. And in both cases they heavily rely on their implementations (GCC Go is always way behind the core Go compiler and runtime).

The fundamental axes of language design are procedural-functional, concurrency/message passing models, and generative coding paradigms (e.g. OOP, generics, etc). People focus too heavily on the latter, but ultimately there's very little diversity wrt to any of them. And in terms of performance, almost any language can be made to come within one order of magnitude of any other, so that hardly matters.

If people spent more time writing new languages instead of talking about them, the world would be a far better place. (Counterintuitive, right!?) Once you write your own language implementation (I have, a few times) you start to see all the other languages for what they are--almost indistinguishable. It makes you a far better programmer, no matter what languages you use regularly.

And I'd learn to use it

[i kan reed]

If I hadn't come to absolutely loathe and distrust everything Google does over the course of the last few years.

Re:And I'd learn to use it

[LWATCDR]

Good for you. Oh Slashdot uses google services so you might as well just not post here.

Re:And I'd learn to use it

[Anonymous Coward]

This is totally Microsoft's VBscript for the web, and NaCL is their ActiveX. They're taking their role as the new Microsoft too seriously...

Re:And I'd learn to use it

[Manfre]

Chrome is the new IE6. A site I maintain has dropped IE6, but has recently been required to make CSS tweaks to fix box and other layout issues with Chrome.

Re:And I'd learn to use it

[i kan reed]

No, you can't avoid every webpage google has stuck its fingers in these days. All you can do is adblock every doubleclick, adwords, google+, and google analytics XSR on the Internet, and avoid using their services directly.

Re:And I'd learn to use it

[spacepimp]

So Chrome is going to languish for 6 years without a hint of improvement and be the core source of all malware and drive by infections on the web?

Re:And I'd learn to use it

[knarf]

You distrust a programming language? Why? The source is available so instead of loathing and distrusting you could download and check. If it turns out there are no small Googoloompas hiding in there you could use it, just like you might use products related to other companies who have behaved in less desirable manners.

Re:And I'd learn to use it

[SoupGuru]

I still trust them a hell of a lot more than I do the other big players in technology.

Re:And I'd learn to use it

[Anonymous Coward]

WARNING: You have activated Slashdot's Logic and Reason detector

Re:And I'd learn to use it

[Anonymous Coward]

Possibly. NaCl does seem like an attractive vector for infection.

Re:And I'd learn to use it

[Princeofcups]

If this were Microsoft, then they would wait until they had a critical mass of users, and then start forgetting to fix bugs for anything other than Chrome. But this isn't Microsoft, so that would NEVER happen. Right?

Re:And I'd learn to use it

[ShieldW0lf]

He who rides a tiger is afraid to dismount

Re:And I'd learn to use it

[Anonymous Coward]

It sure seems like that.

If you are a blubbering idiot who has no idea what he is talking about.

Re:And I'd learn to use it

[Anonymous Coward]

What compiler do they use?

How do you know that the source you can download is the same source that was compiled?

You don't.

Re:And I'd learn to use it

[dwater]

Ah, sure, the source is available, but what about the source of the compiler what was used to compile it? If you can't get the source of the original compiler, the only recourse is to actually check the output of the compiler - I suppose you could also *de*compile the compiler and check *that* source too.

Yay....

[Anonymous Coward]

Yay, another web programming language to learn.

Sigh...

Re:Yay....

[bluefoxlucid]

I was thinking about writing a JavaScript to CIL to use Mono to back JS: the engine would produce CIL that loads into a CIL runtime, along with a support library that connects to the DOM. Then: WEBCIL-Python.

Re:Yay....

[SpzToid]

Yes. Back in the day we had FORTRAN and we liked it. Especially punching the cards and waiting for everything to come back.

Now would you mind stepping over and on to the sidewalk so I can water that patch of grass you're standing on?

Re:Yay....

[SpzToid]

Sorry, replying to my own post, because I meant to reply to the AC GP in my previous post. I hit the wrong message in the thread to reply to.

Reducing up to?

[wonkey_monkey]

reducing overall JavaScript output up to 40%

Err... what?

Re:Reducing up to?

[robmv]

Initial versions generanted big JavaScript files using dart2js, there have been a lot of work optimizing that

Re:Reducing up to?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dart compiles down to JavaScript. They're saying that the version 1.0 compiler produces about 40% less JavaScript for the same input Dart code, relative to some previous versions of the compiler. In other words, it produces more compact and probably much more efficient code.

Re:Reducing up to?

[AC-x]

It reduces the size of the Dart to JS compiled output by 40% compared to previous versions.

Critic bias

[robmv]

While many of the critics of Dart continue to bash it, it is amazing how they like a lot C compilers outputting JavaScript, What is wrong about dart2js that is treated bad in comparison to emscripten and similar tools? Probably they should explain better that they oppose to a new VM (opposing at the same time to NaCl), but a new language with a transpiler, Why different treatments to different compilers that do the same?

Re:Critic bias

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing is that Dart isn't just a transpiler. It can transpile - or it can run twice as fast natively in Chrome's Dart VM. I had hoped we were past the whole "Best viewed with" bullcrap.

Yes, other browser vendors technically can add their own Dart VM... but they also could have written their own flash or ActiveX implementation, which would be an equal waste of development resources.

A non-standard, proprietary language transpiling to a standard language (or bytecode) running on a standardized VM is okay. A non-standard, proprietary language running on a non-standard, proprietary VM, not so much.

Re:Critic bias

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly, Mozilla has been forced to write their own Flash since Adobe, a much larger and for-profit company, doesn't seem to care a whole hell about what users want from Flash.

Basically what's happening right now is a repeat of the whole "proprietary tech" thing of the last decade, except people are more willing to forgive Google because it's cool to monopolize the market if you give away the source code. Except that people don't realize the ends will be the same, because nobody who isn't as big as Google will be able to stop them from doing whatever they want, even if they give away the source for most of it.

We'll essentially be in the same place we were in with IE6, except that Google might not let their tech stagnate as much. Other vendors will still have no choice but to do what Google does, though, just like Opera. Apple doesn't seem to want to stand up to them, nor Microsoft, leaving none other than the under-equipped Mozilla whose fans generally lack the same kind of fanboyism that the others did (just look at how much they hate their own favorite browser these days).

Re:Critic bias

[Anonymous Coward]

For one, a C/++-to-JavaScript compiler unlocks a ton of existing software to be run on the web. Seeing games based on the Unreal engine running in a browser is quite cool. And beyond games, there's just a ton of already-written code in C and C++ that's useful on the web. Meanwhile, there's near-zero interesting Dart code out there that needs to be unlocked.

My problem with Dart is that it's one of two parallel tracks that Google is using to empower front-end development. Dart is the move-as-quickly-as-we-can version that's limited to Chrome and transpiled JavaScript and their involvement in ECMAScript 6+ is the slower-moving but ubiquitous path. I see Dart as an ultimately doomed technology that's mainly there to push JavaScript to get less horrible. I'm really happy that it exists, but I'd prefer to see as little coded in it as possible since I think it's not a long-term solution.

Cross browser?

[royallthefourth]

How is Dart cross browser? It only runs in Chrome. Does having a cross compiler to JS make it cross browser? That'd make any language cross browser, which is to stretch the definition to the point of meaninglessness.

Javascript isn't rocket science to use. You've just got to put in the effort to read a couple books to understand that it requires different design strategies from other OO languages. The scoping, prototypes, and events are actually really nice if you bother to learn how to use them properly.

Re:Cross browser?

[Alarash]

I'm a network engineer, and I do some web development as a hobby to understand better the application layers and all that payload I transport on the wires.. I hate Javascript because I find it hard to debug in a browser. I like having a proper IDE to help me debug my code. If then they convert that code to JS and it works the same, it works for me. I'm not a professional developer so maybe the ones who are should write in JS directly, but my experience is that JS is not a great language because of the debugging. I prefer C# and Java because of Visual Studio and Eclipse's help in debugging.

Re:Cross browser?

[robmv]

Javascript isn't rocket science to use. You've just got to put in the effort to read a couple books to understand that it requires different design strategies from other OO languages. The scoping, prototypes, and events are actually really nice if you bother to learn how to use them properly.

I don't hate JavaScript, but I wish it started to have a real and modern API. DOM objects and a few basic types is not constructive, everyone is adding external libraries to do simple things, using different libraries so you don't have a base API to learn. I am not talking DOM manipulation level APIs like jQuery, but about a good collections, async, crypto, etc APIs. JavaScript core available APIs is a mix of bad basic types (like only the Number type for every numeric value) and HTML spec APIs every one of them with their own conventions

Re:Cross browser?

[slack_justyb]

I think your arguments are pretty valid and I am by no stretch of the imagination a pro-Dart guy, but I believe that the "cross browser" claim comes from the olden days of cross platform languages. C/C++ had (has, just in case the past tense is a really bad choice) cross platform compilers they take C/C++ code and compile it to a language that the target platform understands. For example, C to ARM/x86/amd64/MIPS... compilers.

So my guess here, and it is just a guess, is that Google is using the same rationale to justify calling this a "cross browser" language, because the compiler can turn Dart into a language that can be understood by other browsers, much like a C compiler can compile into different paltforms. Arguments about if that is an accurate equation are totally justified and most likely will ensue hereafter. I'm just tossing up a guess as to why Google felt like that was an accurate statement.

Re:Cross browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're probably right. All these compiler programmers and engineers at Google and Microsoft clearly just don't "get" JavaScript. Apparently they haven't read the approriate JavaScript books.

Can we skip the nonsense and get to the part where you quote Douglas Crockford and I call you a fucking idiot?

Re:Cross browser?

[Nixoloco]

If you haven't tried it, you should try Firebug. It helps debugging Javascript in the browser quite a bit.

Re:Cross browser?

[slim]

Any language that cross-compiles to JS is cross-browser. Correct.

Re:Cross browser?

[royallthefourth]

Maybe you don't "get" Google's Dart strategy. It's ActiveX all over again, but with more technical finesse.

Re:Cross browser?

[Daniel Hoffmann]

Chrome has the best debugger I have seen. I find easier to debug Javascript code than Java code on Eclipse. It is one of the reasons I don`t like TypeScript and its similars, they compile down to Javascript which makes harder to debug the original code because the debugger only sees the Javascript code.

Re:Cross browser?

[angel'o'sphere]

It has nothing to do with ActiveX at all.
ActiveX is a fancy *dll, which has full access to the System.
Dart is a sandboxed, either by the JavaScript Engine or the Dart Engine.

Re:Cross browser?

[dtfinch]

I never found Typescript's output to be that hard to read, since it preserves comments and changes the code very little apart from rewriting class definitions.

You can enable source maps, which the Firefox/Chrome debuggers can use to show you the original code when debugging compiled code. And some minifiers like UglifyJS can transform source maps to continue working after minifying.

Re:Cross browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the technical finesse.

Without a standards body, google will dicate the languages change which means that even if another browser impliments it, it will always be behinde the eghtball with supporting the newer standard. Because of this, none of them will impliment it. So if its used, it will be a "best used with chrome" website. Which sucks and is very reminicent of the old browser war days.

Re:Cross browser?

[Dracolytch]

If you're lucky.

Re:Cross browser?

[narcc]

You've missed the parents point. This is not a technical issue.

Re:Cross browser?

[Kielistic]

Look here. The Dart devs have been very open about their goals and their choices. They do plan standardisation and only want to develop the language to where they want it (where they think it will be good enough to drive adoption) before handing it off.

Re:Cross browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

> The Dart devs have been very open about their goals and their choices.

Which is a complete and utter lie, and you should feel bad for saying that. Just two weeks ago, Google made the decision to deprecate the query() method used to access the DOM. They renamed it to querySelector(). There was no warning. There was no discussion. There was no apology for breaking nearly every Dart program ever written. They just decided for no reason to get rid of the most commonly used function in the language. That is not open.

Re:Cross browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

> How is Dart cross browser? It only runs in Chrome.

You Google fan bois are annoying. Dart does not run in Chrome. It does not even run in Chromium. Only Dartium supports it. Google has said that one day they may support it with Chrome, but Chrome does not run Dart. Why lie to protect Google?

Re:Cross browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right about the query() rename to querySelector() fiasco. Google claims that when the new query() method will improve performance between 2% to 5%. That's worth screwing over every Dart developer and breaking every Dart project. Right?

Re:Cross browser?

[Kielistic]

What does renaming a method have to do with their choices on when to hand off to a standards body? The whole point of not being in the hands of a standards body (and until now being below version 1.0) was their ability to make unanimous decisions like this. They want the language to be designed with a singular vision which they believe leads to a stronger language. They even give evidence for this belief.

At last, a REAL language for wed development

[Anonymous Coward]

Despite the nay-sayers, the mere fact that code on the DartVM runs much faster than native Javascript is awesome. For people worried about Dart giving chrome an edge - DART IS OPEN SOURCE. All browsers can throw the DartVM in and gain all of the performance advantages. So no, this isn't about Google maliciously trying to create a walled garden, it's about deprecating Javascript because it sucks for large-scale development and has been shown to be slow.

Re:At last, a REAL language for wed development

[Anonymous Coward]

VBscript is about deprecating Javascript because it sucks for large-scale development and has been shown to be slow.

fify

Google's Weight

[Anonymous Coward]

Just Google throwing its weight around. Nothing will come of it.

What about a dart plugin?

[jnowlan]

How much effort would it take to create a plug-in for FF and/or i.e. that contained the dart vm?
Would it get you anything? What would the issues be?

Re:What about a dart plugin?

[slack_justyb]

Don't know about the coding side of it, but I would guess it to be pretty straight-forward process since the VM is open sourced. I think the better question would be how much political effort would it take to get a plug-in for FF and/or IE into the hands of people? Pure JavaScript folk are pretty damn hard-core about their language and Dart to them just seems like a solution to a non-existent problem. Besides, with Dart being a plug-in, you'd have websites once again going into the "check for plug-ins" hell that they are trying their best to get out of.

Re:What about a dart plugin?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, because the other browsers don't support Pepper/PPAPI, and Google has no desire to support NPAPI anymore. Even Chrome Frame gets little love, so why would they bother?

I don't sum up Dart as being a new language.

[Anonymous Coward]

TypeScript is an alternative way to write JavaScript. Dart is more of a different way to approach web development that also includes a different way to write JavaScript. I'm not sold on Dart, but it's worth reading up on what Google is trying to do.

No, no don't mod the parent down!

[slack_justyb]

I think the parent has a good argument, maybe just no stated in the best of terms.

However, on the Dart site it says that Dartium, the DartVM enabled version of Chrome, will be one of the major focuses of the Dart team. Somehow, I have a sinking feeling that maybe, just maybe, Dart and NaCL are going to become *major* line items for ChromeOS and Chromebooks. Much like how ActiveX and VBScript became pretty important pillars in Microsoft's platform.

So while on the face of it, it sounds like a shrill. It actually can be rather thought provoking about the future of Chrome and Google. Just for a second think about where VBScript and ActiveX went during their lifetime and what they eventually evolved to. Granted we all now look back and see VBScript as the useless thing that it is, but in it's day, it provided a very powerful way of making offline enabled web pages and was featured heavily in WSH for admins until replaced by PowerShell. Clearly, Google hinting at Dart in the server is an indicator that Dart very may well have a life not unlike VBScript.

Why not python?

[Daniel Hoffmann]

Why don't they just put the python runtime sandboxed? Why create a new language? Why not Lua or Ruby? Why not all of them so I can choose? All these languages have run-times on most major platforms (except iOS because, you know, Apple). Can't each browser just come up with a way to sandbox the language and provide the hooks to the DOM?

But really, the main problem isn't even javascript. The REAL problem is the DOM, it sucks manipulating it at run-time. The DOM was made to build documents, not applications. We need some real desktop-like api for building applications that allows little boxes on the screen to open html documents.

Re:Why not python?

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed 1000%. Browsers weren't meant for web apps. Everything we do to make apps in the browser, from ajax to DOM manipulation, is a hack.

Re:Why not python?

[Lisandro]

Much, much agreed. I would *love* to see Lua on a browser. It is Python after a marahton diet.

Burned by GWT

[smist08]

After being burned by Google abandoning GWT, I would worry about adopting Dart. Won't Google just lose interest and abandon it after a year or two. Won't we just see a new project start up almost immediately for some newer better web language? Not sure I'd jump in on this one.

Re:Burned by GWT

[Anonymous Coward]

*Citation needed

At a quick glance, it looks to me like there was a GWT release just today...

Re:Burned by GWT

[angel'o'sphere]

Since when is GWT abandoned?

Re:Burned by GWT

[Anonymous Coward]

This, very much this. Google are the new MIcrosoft and Microsoft are the new, young naive Google, but in somehow worse and better conditions at the same time. Very paradoxical indeed.

Google are dropping everything these days if it doesn't make them a quadrillion dollars a second.
Even things that could have made them money are being dropped! Like iGoogle just there, trivial to make money from that, nope, dropped, who uses homepages anyway, it is all about the terrible extensions that hardly work half the time and are usually annoying. Oh did we mention your extensions have no sidebar, so you will need to open them all the time in that silly little popout crap thing? Yeah, thanks that one dick in the Google Groups that was so opposed to sidebars, you genius you. You know who you are.

Not to mention the whole distrust and discomfort in the company as a whole, it is starting to sound more and more like MIcrosoft.
So many people (at least the ones I know) are even questioning there position there these days post Labs and 20%.
I guess they will just need to ride it out and take advantage of their resources as much as possible before they get cut, just like with MS Research and MSDN.
It is only going to be a matter of time before they likely get made redundant, or get their projects killed, may as well make the best of it.
The good and bad sides of working with a huge company.

No longer is Google about the honest, decent way to profit, they finally grew up in to the big bad bully that all companies tend towards. And they never even needed to, that is the worst part. Google were doing fine. I have no idea why the sudden shift in their entire company. It boggles the mind as to why they suddenly decided to make enemies with half the business world when they were on such good terms with everyone and their finances.

Re:Burned by GWT

[CyDharttha]

GWT has been open sourced. I am hopeful that this can only be a good thing. There is still at least as much activity on the project as when it was not open source. The 2.6.0 RC1 release notes look great. Just recently a Google employee was working on a bug I was tracking. And there's the GWT Create conference coming up.

I was worried about GWT when I saw Dart coming up and getting attention, because I've enjoyed writing apps in GWT, and would like it to continue to be an option when we're scoping new projects. So far what I'm seeing from the new status of the project is helping to keep my confidence.

Re:Burned by GWT

[slack_justyb]

What? Do you mean 2.6.0 RC1? 2.6 looks to be more of a clean up of the 2.5.1 stuff rather than anything new. If anything the main thing that 2.6 brings is that they brought Java 7 into the picture. I wouldn't say that Google *has* abandon GWT, but they sure are making the common gestures of getting ready for a good old fashion keelhauling.

Now for just my opinion, GWT sucks. It's a messy looking API and lacks a ton of flexibility. For example, trying to implement custom UI for your web page is painful and totally unpleasant. More so than say making the same customer UI in Java Swing (which is pretty painful in of itself). In my opinion, and you my mod me down for it, is that anything that is worst to do in (insert framework here) than it is in Java should not exist.

Re:Burned by GWT

[angel'o'sphere]

If you find Swing painful your comment about GWT loses quite a bit of credibility.
And your last sentence coins it, lol. You find Swing the most difficult "framework"? (Hint, it is no framework, it is a library) Sorry that is a total laugh ...

Re:Burned by GWT

[slack_justyb]

Well I work with Java all the time and I find Swing great to use, but when I want to build my own user interface elements, then yes, I find it very painful indeed. I've done custom widgets in Cario/GTK, .NET, and even for Android; and Swing is pretty up there for the bar that needs to be crossed to have a custom widget. I don't find Swing all that difficult to use at face value but just mucking about AWT or even SWT is far better than trying to muck around and build custom GUIs in Swing.

In that respect, GWT is worst. GWT makes a lot of assumptions about how you want to convert Java into JavaScript. When you want to create your own web elements, not only do you have to build it using some of the worst API I've seen, you actually have to fight the assumptions that GWT tries to make right out of the box. You are literally fighting on two fronts to just make a damn clock widget or rich editor widget. It is ridiculous.

GWT on a whole is a pretty sad state. It integrates poorly with JEE frameworks and when it does, it's literally shoe-horned. You'll find that something like JSR 356 is a waaaaaay better approach to bridging the gap between server side code and client code, and I'd hope that the Java community can keep hitting excellent projects like this. Because Google isn't doing it with their idea of interoperability.

Also since you want to be mincing words between library and framework. If you happen to head over to JSR 296 you'll see that the JSR refers to it as "The Swing Application Framework". Maybe you should head over there and educated them that they should have called it "The Swing Application Library". That being said, I believe your retort to have loss any of its credibility but seriously, this is Slashdot, does anyone think anything on this site is credible? Hope you are still laughing though.

Re:Burned by GWT

[slack_justyb]

Nope wait, wait!! That last reply, the JSR thing not correct. I'll totally admit wrong when wrong and JSR 296 isn't Swing itself but the aborted effort to build the application framework a while back. My bad, got that wrong. All shit tossing about that you want totally justified. That is all.

Re:Burned by GWT

[angel'o'sphere]

I guess if someone likes GWT or not is a matter of taste. I'm quite content with it, however I wished it would use less tables and more divs.
I like the API of it, but I never made really "custom" widgets. However there is a quite good tutorial how to do that. I did not asume it is difficult, same for Swing, there are lots of tutorials how to make your own widgets.

OTOH most of the time it is more efficient to write your own look and feel instead.

Well that JSR for an Swing based Application Framework, was a one man project. He relied a lot on annotations (which I don't really like, but again that might be a matter of taste).

More appropriate names...

[Anonymous Coward]

Dochebaggery.
Dirt.
Dud.
Dumb.
Dung.

With a track record like Google's...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, Google has established that they like to create and abandon stuff. We really don't need Yet Another Programming Language, since there are more languages now than anyone can use. Google could open source their abandoned language in a few years, but why bother with Yet Another Programming Language when you could stick to something that's widely used and an industry standard? I can't find any reason to even muster the energy to click on the Dart link. (Now, if it had something to do with Atari Force's Dart, maybe I would.)

The Dart meme always makes me laugh

[Anonymous Coward]

"I don't always write Hello World in Dart...but when I do, it takes 17,259 lines."

Strongest pushers for EcmaScript 6? Oh Really??

[Anonymous Coward]

So I can use for..of loops, let and fat arrow assignments in Chrome like I can in Firefox?

Re:Strongest pushers for EcmaScript 6? Oh Really??

[Anonymous Coward]

Also startsWith and endsWith are only in Firefox afaik.

Re:Strongest pushers for EcmaScript 6? Oh Really??

[slack_justyb]

Wait a second, are you really holding JS extensions in the Firefox experimental against Chrome stable? Really? Are we doing that now?

Re:Strongest pushers for EcmaScript 6? Oh Really??

[Anonymous Coward]

As if nobody already does that against Firefox with experiment CSS in Chrome.

Can the same be said of Microsoft? Or Apple? Or ..

[walterbyrd]

Do you think Google is the only big tech company that drops products, or services?

How many browser based web programming languages?

[walterbyrd]

Tons of server based web programming languages. But, as far as I know there is only one, widely used, language for programs that run on the client browser.

Why all the BS about Dart, and Google?

[walterbyrd]

If you don't like Dart, that's fine. But I am seeing a lot of posts that are just BS.

1) Too many web languages.

- There is only one language that is commonly used for apps that run in the client browser - ONE!

2) Google sucks.

- I defy to name some problem with google that does not apply to Microsoft, or Apple. Privacy? Are you kidding? Dropping products? Are you kidding? At least google is not pulling countless patent trolling scams. And google does not do the vendor lock-in scams like Apple, or Microsoft.

3) Another VBScript

- No Dart will run on non-google browsers.

Dart Myths Debunked:
http://blog.sethladd.com/2012/10/9-dart-myths-debunked.html

- Dart is made to run in

Windoze only?

[sproketboy]

DartEditor uses Java and is windoze only? WTF. Nope.

Re:Windoze only?

[bug_hunter]

I can't speak to if DartEditor uses Java (and if it does, maybe it just bundles a stand alone bundled JRE?) but it works on most flavours of Windows, Mac and Linux
https://www.dartlang.org/tools/editor/

I'm sure Google have done the occasional Windows only thing, but in general it's really not their style.

Re:Windoze only?

[sproketboy]

Yeah it's based on Eclipse. I did find the Mac/Linux downloads so OK I'll try it.

Dart needs JavaScript

[Hypotensive]

What I find hilarious is that the Dart language website (dartlang.org) actually requires JavaScript to work.

Re:Dart needs JavaScript

[dwater]

...even if you use their dart-capable browser?

Re:Dart needs JavaScript

[Hypotensive]

Well, after reading further I find that Dart compiles down to JavaScript in any case, presumably even in the Dart-capable browser, which makes it about as useful as a fifth wheel.

Also of note is this:

if (1) {
// this will be executed in JavaScript and other sane languages
} else {
// this will be executed in Dart
}

Got to love it when those language designers have such hubris that they think they can do the exact opposite of what everyone else in the world is used to.

Re:Dart needs JavaScript

[Anonymous Coward]

I would be surprised if Dart was just converted to Javascript in a Dart-capable browser, but even if it did I find the comment about 'fifth wheel' to be disingenuous - obviously there may be advantages for the developer, presumably resulting from Dart being easier to develop with or maintain.

I'm not sure what your point is about the code...interesting comments (although I'm not sure about Javascript being 'sane')...but I'm not sure where it is 'the exact opposite'...perhaps you can explain your point there? How is it 'the exact opposite'?

Re:Dart needs JavaScript

[Anonymous Coward]

If (1) is a type error