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Will Google's Dart Language Replace Javascript? (Video)
Seth Ladd, Google Web engineer and Chrome Developer Advocate, is today's interviewee. He's talking about Dart, which Wikipedia says is 'an open-source Web programming language developed by Google.' The Wikipedia article goes on to say Dart was unveiled at the GOTO conference in Aarhus, October 10–12, 2011, and that the goal of Dart is 'ultimately to replace JavaScript as the lingua franca of web development on the open web platform.' A bold aim, indeed. Last month (June, 2014), InfoWorld ran an article by Paul Krill headlined, Google's Go language on the rise, but Dart is stalling. Seth Ladd, unlike Paul Krill, is obviously rah-rah about Dart -- which is as it should be, since that's his job -- and seems to think it has a growing community and a strong place in the future of Web programming. For more about Dart, scroll down to watch Tim Lord's video interview with Seth -- or read the transcript, if you prefer. (Alternate Video Link)
No.
Have gnu, will travel.
I. e., no.
Dart would need to be submitted to an independent standards body and be royalty and patent free in order for any other company to even contemplate embracing it. I don't see Microsoft, Apple, or IBM handing the wheel to google to be sole dictator of the future of a critical component of web technology . Dart may be a good idea but without community support like what has happened with the HTML 5 standards group it will continue to be a proprietary browser specific language like VBScript in Internet Explorer.
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be-T J
I really wanted to use dart, I liked the fact it had types, but once I tried using it found out types where optional, and there was no way to make them required. So knowing programmers/people in general are lazy it will degenerate into no types at all. I don't mind having untyped variables as long as you are explicit about it, but dart is the other way round.
I think the web needs a statically typed language since webs apps are growing in size, having types allows for greater readability and ease of refactoring that untyped languages just don't provide. Dart is just not it.
If you can convert Dart to Javascript then I don't get the point of Dart.
If you can convert Dart to Javascript then I don't get the point of Dart.
You can convert A to B, where A and B are any Turing complete computer languages. So, for instance, JavaScript can be converted to PDP-11 assembly language which can be converted to Python which can be converted to C++. The main reasons to use one language over another are performance and the ability to express the algorithm clearly. Dart is (slightly) faster than JavaScript (since fewer type conversions and symbol lookups need to be done at runtime). But the main advantages are that it has better scoping and is more strongly typed, including structures and classes. This also means it is more reliable since more problems can be detected by static analysis tools, and runtime checks can be more rigorous.
No, I think a bad car analogy would be more helpful.
"If you can bore out the cylinders and hand fit bigger pistons and crank on the 1.4 Liter model to get a 1.6 Liter engine, why buy the 1.6L model"
A simple solution, which I'm sure you've overlooked, would be to try learning the language.
It's amazing how few people bother, even after using the language for years.
Required reading for internet skeptics
Dart was submitted for ECMA standardization early this year and is now ECMA-408.
[Disclaimer: I work on the Dart team]