
Dart Disappoints Hackers - DanielRibeiro
http://siliconangle.com/blog/2011/10/10/googles-dart-programming-language-disappoints-hackers/
======
markokocic
I see the need for javascript replacement, and Dart is a valid attempt at
that.

What I can't see is rationale in inventing yet another language, when there
are alternatives that already exist, have decent user base, and could be a
good fit (see Lua, Ruby, Mirah, Coffescript).

Someone on the Clojure mailing list said that the best thing would be if
VM/Runtime that will run Dart on non Chrome browsers could be
reused/repurposed to run alternative languages like Coffescript or
Clojurescript, it would be best possible solution.

~~~
masklinn
> What I can't see is rationale in inventing yet another language

I can see that, if it's a significant improvement on the previous language
_for the user base_.

That's not the case for Dart, I see a lot of truth in the quips "puts the Java
back into Javascript" and "Takes a hard turn towards going back to more
machine-friendly and less developer-friendly languages".

New languages are a fine thing, but Dart is neither original nor _interesting_
, it's mostly shoving back a heap-ful of Java into Javascript and calling it a
day, that's not helpful.

Some sort of web IR all web languages could compile to would be useful
(especially with broad support from other browser vendors), a chopped down
Javascript with its problems fixed (JS 1.7's `let` instead of current `var`,
"strict-mode" by default, structural types, typed object keys, an actual
integer type) would be helpful, a "best subset" of Harmony would be helpful,
Harmony itself would be helpful, a brand new language with PL concepts less
than 30 years old would be helpful, but from what I've seen so far Dart is
_none_ of these.

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ramblerman
A sensational tech article based on the kneejerk reactions of HN :(

This project has a lot of potential and is extremely ambitious. This immediate
"my favourite feature x" is missing, or petty bickering over semi colons
betrays lack of insight, and depth.

~~~
tagawa
It's not just missing features or bickering over semi-colons - the much bigger
issue is the fragmentation highlighted by Brendan Eich and quoted in the
article.

~~~
michaelcampbell
I'm sure the CEO of Myspace was similarly furrowing his brow when Facebook
came out.

The guy "on the top" is always going to FUD and poo-poo the upstarts. Whether
they make it or not should be left to their own merits, not what issues the
existing hegemony has with it.

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danssig
I wish people would stop trying to make high level languages that run in the
browser. Make a standard VM and then we can compile _all_ languages to that!
The need is clearly there, how much JavaScript today actually starts out as
some other language and gets compiled to JS?

Stop trying to fix the syntax and just give me a way to have any language I
want.

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vf
I don't understand why someone would learn to use Dart, Coffescript etc when
the effort could be put into developing a deeper understanding of javascript.

All I ever hear from developers sometimes is how browser X is breaking
standards and then something like this comes along and I can't help but face
palm. I'm embarrassed by the relentless pursuit of non-existent perfection
from the developer community. Sometimes you just need to get the job done with
the tools you have, and and learn to fucking use them instead of pursuing the
grail.

~~~
beej71
Learning more and more about JavaScript will give you diminishing returns
after a while. Once you understand prototype-based inheritance, common
patterns and idioms, and how objects and integers work and have gone through
the language spec, you might be better off as an individual starting to learn
something completely different.

Dart and CoffeeScript are just other languages, so getting a rough handle on
them should take an hour or so per. Just learning what concepts languages
bring to the table (e.g. how does Dart do concurrency and how does that
compare to JavaScript? How does it compare to Erlang?) can give you better
insight into trends and the state of the art, and can give you new ideas about
what is possible. IMHO, this is worth doing even if you're never going to use
the language.

As for "breaking standards", as long as my JS still runs on Chrome, I'm more
than content no matter what Dart does.

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gaius
The design goals for Dart look suspiciously like the original goals for Java,
particularly _Make Dart feel familiar and natural to programmers and thus easy
to learn_. In the case of Java, that just got us a crippled, verbose knock-off
of C++. Hmm.

------
OctaneOps
I would have liked a scala flavored effort...duh!

~~~
MostAwesomeDude
And I wanted Python, but it's not like Google actually considers things that
already exist when making new things.

On the bright side, _nobody's_ gonna adopt this. :3

------
wavephorm
More like "Google shocked to discover that nobody is on their friend list
anymore".

They've gone to great lengths to make every software and hardware company on
the planet their enemy. They would've had to really knock it out of the park.

~~~
Tichy
How so? I still like a lot of their products and APIs.

