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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."
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!
If I hadn't come to absolutely loathe and distrust everything Google does over the course of the last few years.
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.
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.
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
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. :-)
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?
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.
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.
Any language that cross-compiles to JS is cross-browser. Correct.
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.
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.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Next you'll be telling us that an optimising C compiler can't create faster code than readable hand-written ASM...
What I find hilarious is that the Dart language website (dartlang.org) actually requires JavaScript to work.