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Google's Dart Becomes ECMA's Dart

Posted by timothy on from the trying-for-traction dept.

mikejuk writes "Google's Dart just reached version 1.0, but now it seems that it has aspirations to being an international standard. The question is will this make any difference to the language's future? Given that Google effectively owns Dart, what advantage does standardization bring? The answer to what Google thinks it brings is indicated in the Chromium blog: 'The new standardization process is an important step towards a future where Dart runs natively in web browsers.' and this seems reasonable. A standard is something that would be required before other browser makers decided to fall in line and support native Dart. It is probably a necessary but far from sufficient condition, however, with Microsoft, Apple and Mozilla having other interests to further. Last but not least, having the backing of a standard might just encourage possible users to believe that the language won't sink if Google gets distracted with other projects and decides that Dart is dispensable. However, a strong open source development community capable of supporting Dart without Google's input would be a better reassurance. If you want to help, Google would like you to join the committee. After all, it still doesn't have a Vice Chair. So can we expect to see ECMA CoffeeScript or TypeScript in the near future? Probably not."

8 of 190 comments (clear)

  1. Why would you do unpaid work for Google by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Go find an open source project that actually matters.

  2. Who cares? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Earlier versions of C# are also an ECMA standard, but nobody cares either way. It's like looking for a sales bullet point which doesn't make any practical difference.

    1. Re:Who cares? by StormReaver · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Earlier versions of C# are also an ECMA standard, but nobody cares either way.

      More than that: after the OOXML ECMA debacle, no one takes ECMA seriously anymore. Submitting a standard to EMCA now is like announcing that your blue-chip company is selling penny stocks.

  3. Re:OK, I'll bite by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Dart is Google's attempt to replace Javascript. They're doing this because Javascript is a shitty language.

    They're doing this because:
    - they are going to try to monetize it.
    - they can't get developers to write stuff for ChromiumOS if it only runs on ChromiumOS.
    - it will natively search and report on your web pages.
    - their 'Go' language didn't go anywhere.
    - Google has an inherent need to have some sort of impact on (and therefore control over) whatever anyone does on the internet.
    - releasing version 1.0 means a Google product is finally out of perpetual beta.

  4. Not to rain anybody's party, but.... by Mister+Liberty · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Google is gaining way too much power over what you over the internet.

    The Internet is NOT google. They, Google, came along and appropriated a lot.
    And oh ueah, have yet to really show there is no partnership with others who might
    do user tracking not through software but through hardware.

    Listen: Google has NOT been in class with you!

    Oh, and all you MicroSofties: don't bother to chime in. I'm calling a spade a spade
    and you better not like it.

    1. Re:Not to rain anybody's party, but.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      They created their own replacement for NPAPI plugins, and got Adobe to prefer it over NPAPI. Now they're not going to support NPAPI anymore in a year. As a result, Linux Flash is now only going to work on their browser, and it hasn't really improved the situation in Chrome enough to justify the switch.

      They didn't like other people's image formats, so they invented WebP, and got a lot of nickel-and-diming image hosters to start pressuring other browser vendors to support the format as if it's a proven tech... even though it's a "standard" that has shifted so much it's turned into such a kitchen sink of a format that everyone will basically have to use their implementation.

      They decided that Media Source Extensions were good enough that they could flip the switch on Youtube before other browsers were ready for it, thus rendering Firefox unable to play hi-def videos in HTML5 on Youtube.. though it was completely unnecessary to do so.

      They didn't like how long it was taking to make HTML2 so they invented SPDY. They then enabled it on the products that they popularized by using other people's standards, like Google Documents, thus forcing other browser vendors to support it or feel comparitively sluggish, even though HTML2 was coming along at the time anyway.

      And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

  5. Re:OK, I'll bite by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Javascript is a shitty language. It has full object support, just based on prototypes instead of something sane. I do not know what it is about web "developers" that makes them like shitty languages like PHP and javascript, but they are. Aside from very poorly definitions of "standard" functions, both have so many side effects and scoping issues that it's a wonder anything ever got written with them. Not that anyone writes stuff based on javascript's "standard" library. No, you NEED to use a third party cross platform lib like jquery because the language is so poorly implemented too.

    Javascript was an accident. It wasn't and isn't particularly suited to ANY task, let alone the web. People have hacked together some decent solutions, but the fact remains that js's design has been an anchor around web browsers and web development in general.

    Not saying dart is any good either, but that doesn't make javascript good.

  6. Re:Let me translate by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 3, Insightful

    No, it does not. It translates to "I know JavaScript rather well, but I also know several other languages", so I am capable of comparing things and seeing how many bad choices there are in JS language design.

    OTOH, the people who praise JS the language tend to be the guys who learned it after C or PHP, and who memorized that "JavaScript is like Lisp with curly braces" and accepted on faith that Lisp is uber awesome, without understanding what it all actually means - if you ask, they'll usually give you some canned reply along the lines of "it has first-class functions!!!1!!", as if it is somehow remarkable for a PL in today's age.