

Why We Need WebAssembly: An Interview with Brendan Eich - ericelliott
https://medium.com/javascript-scene/why-we-need-webassembly-an-interview-with-brendan-eich-7fb2a60b0723

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cpr
Great interview. (Happen to agree with BE entirely. ;-)

I like the image at the end of a bunch of little bangs instead of one big
(failing) bang. Maybe even if they're synchronized nicely you can get the same
effect as an internal combustion engine with many little bangs driving a
crankshaft.

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michaelwww
It wasn't that long ago the Brendan Eich was still hostile to Dart
[[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9266599](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9266599)]
but now he seems to have softened.

 _" Ideally we’ll get things in JavaScript like big integers/bignums that Dart
has that JavaScript doesn’t yet"_

Historically, Mr. Eich has been critical of Dart, and if you follow that
thread above he has nothing good to say about Dart, so this is a change,
probably brought on by the everyone concluding that the Dart VM has no future
in browsers and therefore is not a threat to Javascript.

Dart (dartlang) has a lot of nice features, is easy to work with and can
increase productivity greatly in some cases. Dart still has a future if they
improve the Javascript output as this project is
attempting:[[https://github.com/dart-
lang/dev_compiler](https://github.com/dart-lang/dev_compiler)]

I'm glad Mr. Eich has opened his mind to some of the good things in Dart.

~~~
BrendanEich
Please read the comment to which you link. I was not hostile to Dart, rather I
did vent a bit in refuting bogus crediting of Dart for things going into JS in
ES6/2015 and ES7/2016.

My criticisms of Dart on HN over the years have all been about the way it was
developed: in secret first, with an aim to replace JS that could not work,
with serious dart2js bugs not in DartVM left to lie for years; and the
consequent lack of JS uplift, seeming to bet all on DartVM in the long run.

That long-odds bet did not work out, and it cost years of time during which
even more features Dart needs in JS, notably int (bignum) support, could have
been done sooner, even possibly in ES6.

All bygones now, but the point here is that I mainly avoided criticizing Dart
language design (much is good, some a bit boring as the designers concede) in
preference to criticizing the technical politics and market power play.

~~~
michaelwww
It was very unfortunate that the first time that most heard about Dart was
through a leaked memo from Google predicting Dart would replace JavaScript
[[http://pastebin.com/NUMTTrKj](http://pastebin.com/NUMTTrKj)]. It created an
atmosphere of hostility towards Dart that I'm sure the developers didn't
deserve. I now understand your objections and I'm sorry I lumped you in with
the general hostility.

My own doubts about Dart after using it for a commercial app, began after
watching this video
[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AqbCQuK0gM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AqbCQuK0gM)]
where Anders Hejlsberg and Lars Bak discuss Dart and TypeScript. I felt Anders
made a better case for TypeScript and Lars was feeling a bit threatened, which
confirmed for me that Anders was right. Considering where Dart and TypeScript
are today, I made the right choice moving to TypeScript.

The other problem that I felt wasn't being addressed was that the Dart2js
output and JavaScript interop needed a lot of improvement. Since it became
clear that the DartVM was not landing in other browsers, this should have been
a top priority and it wasn't. Now it is a priority, but it's not clear to me
how many resources Google is giving to it.

I'm very glad that the path is much clearer these days and thank you for your
efforts to sort these things out.

------
JS_Cheerleader
Yay!

