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Announcing Dart 2 Stable and the Dart Web Platform

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Re: Announcing Dart 2 Stable and the Dart Web Platform

#91

Post by EugeneOZ »

dragonwriter wrote: post #83
EugeneOZ wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With its combination of static and runtime checks Do you personally use it? That "strong mode" is a theory-only thing, it doesn't work with any real code, only with code you wrote without real third-party libraries.

You are, at best, confusing Dart 2 with Dart 1; strong mode was one of several Dart 1 modes, but, yes, it's possible to run into problems because dependencies weren't designed for it. There is no option in Dart 2; everything is the equivalent of strong mode, which eliminates ecosystem problems.

I mentioned I've only tried Dart 1.x. Glad to hear it's changed in Dart 2.

Re: Announcing Dart 2 Stable and the Dart Web Platform

#92

Post by pcwalton »

sbjs wrote: post #81
wnsire wrote: post #36

Reading the few comments here is really interesting. Every-time there is a discussion about Dart , people talk about Flutter... they very rarely talk about Dart on the Server or on the Web... A while ago I considered using Dart to build a Web API. I was shocked by the non-existent ecosystem around this language. The Redis package has been un-maintained for almost three years now, and Angular Dart is always a few vers…

I think what killed Dart is that they emphasized their plans to make Dart a first-class scripting language of Chrome, so that you could use instead of JavaScript. This had a lot of backlash from literally everyone, I think mostly because they were bit too hard by IE doing the exact same thing just a few years before. Only after a few years the Dart team changed courses and said "never mind about that VM-inside-Chrome…

> I think mostly because they were bit too hard by IE doing the exact same thing just a few years before.

It's pretty simple, in my view: JS developers were happy with the language and didn't want a browser vendor trying to replace it. Remember that it was announced around the time that the new ES6 ("Harmony") features were generating a lot of excitement about the future of JS.

Re: Announcing Dart 2 Stable and the Dart Web Platform

#93

Post by wnsire »

skybrian wrote: post #65
wnsire wrote: post #36

Reading the few comments here is really interesting. Every-time there is a discussion about Dart , people talk about Flutter... they very rarely talk about Dart on the Server or on the Web... A while ago I considered using Dart to build a Web API. I was shocked by the non-existent ecosystem around this language. The Redis package has been un-maintained for almost three years now, and Angular Dart is always a few vers…

AngularDart is a hard fork. You shouldn't compare version numbers with original Angular since they are independent projects now.

I wasn't aware of this , thanks for the info.

Nonetheless , the API seem to be behind the original. Hence interop with JavaScript seems incredibly messy and time consuming.

Re: Announcing Dart 2 Stable and the Dart Web Platform

#94

Post by scarface74 »

the_trapper wrote: post #87
scarface74 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How has the open source nature of Dart helped so far? Open source is not a panacea for a project that’s not popular and doesn’t have an active vibrant community around it.

Although it's not a guarantee that it'll stick around, the fact that it's open source greatly increases the probability. GWT is actually still very much alive even though Google abandoned it years ago.

Is that something you are willing to bet a major architectural decision on and/or your career?

I’ve been a Microsoft developer for over 20 years and a .Net developer for over 10. Even though I don’t see .Net “dying”, it’s also not a major growth opportunity.

Java is definitely not doing well compared to .Net even though it is open source - because of the mismanagement of Oracle. I see dart going down the same road.

As much as I prefer .Net to the JavaScript ecosystem, I am tying my horse to it. I’m focusing my attention on everything JavaScript over the next year (yes it makes me sad).

Until four months ago, I had never touched Python. But the more I got into AWS, the more I realized that the ecosystem around AWS and Python seemed to be the strongest. So Python it was.

Re: Announcing Dart 2 Stable and the Dart Web Platform

#95

Post by rhencke »

EugeneOZ wrote: post #89
foldr wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/first-edition/raw-pointers.ht... *const u32 (for example) is a clearly a Rust type -- a const pointer to an unsigned 32-bit integer, analogous to const uint32_t *p in C/C++. I'm not sure what you mean about trait names. The purpose of the Any trait is to make it possible to pass around values of any type and dynamically downcast them, as the documentation indicates. That is a safe analo…

To be dynamic, "Any" should be able to represent literally ANY type. As you can find, Any is a reflection-wise trait to work with static types. It's not something what you can use when you don't know type and language will dynamically convert it. You can't write fn example(foo: Any) -> u32 { foo+55 } as you CAN do in dynamic languages. Do you understand me now? Or we will keep talking about unsafe extra special types…

Please remember there's a genuine human on the other end, trying to have a respectful conversation with you.

Re: Announcing Dart 2 Stable and the Dart Web Platform

#96

Post by foldr »

EugeneOZ wrote: post #89
foldr wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/first-edition/raw-pointers.ht... *const u32 (for example) is a clearly a Rust type -- a const pointer to an unsigned 32-bit integer, analogous to const uint32_t *p in C/C++. I'm not sure what you mean about trait names. The purpose of the Any trait is to make it possible to pass around values of any type and dynamically downcast them, as the documentation indicates. That is a safe analo…

To be dynamic, "Any" should be able to represent literally ANY type. As you can find, Any is a reflection-wise trait to work with static types. It's not something what you can use when you don't know type and language will dynamically convert it. You can't write fn example(foo: Any) -> u32 { foo+55 } as you CAN do in dynamic languages. Do you understand me now? Or we will keep talking about unsafe extra special types…

You can do that if you change it to &Any and then downcast. See the docs for examples. If the issue is that you have to downcast, then your initial claim that Rust lacks void pointers was irrelevant even if true, since you also have to downcast a void pointer in C before you can perform operations on the type that it's actually pointing to.

Re: Announcing Dart 2 Stable and the Dart Web Platform

#97

Post by munificent »

sbjs wrote: post #81
wnsire wrote: post #36

Reading the few comments here is really interesting. Every-time there is a discussion about Dart , people talk about Flutter... they very rarely talk about Dart on the Server or on the Web... A while ago I considered using Dart to build a Web API. I was shocked by the non-existent ecosystem around this language. The Redis package has been un-maintained for almost three years now, and Angular Dart is always a few vers…

I think what killed Dart is that they emphasized their plans to make Dart a first-class scripting language of Chrome, so that you could use instead of JavaScript. This had a lot of backlash from literally everyone, I think mostly because they were bit too hard by IE doing the exact same thing just a few years before. Only after a few years the Dart team changed courses and said "never mind about that VM-inside-Chrome…

I'm on the Dart team and I agree with pretty much all of this.

Personal opinion time:

Lars and Kasper, the original leads and creators of the language came out very confidently with this mission to get Dart natively supported in the browser based on the assumption that the language was so good and the VM would be so fast that users would clamor it.

They had the best of intentions — they really did want to make a delightful, productive, fast language. They intended to move the entire web forward the same way V8 had when it first launched, and they believed deeply that Dart would enable that.

But I think they really underestimated how vastly different designing and marketing a language is from simply implementing an already-successful one.

It's not enough to just have a good product. The way you present it is often more important. And you don't even have the luxury of defining "good product" — you must be mercenary in letting your users' needs override your personal preferences. All of that was a real struggle for them.

For what it's worth, there's been a lot of staff changes over the years since Dart first launched. Lars and Kasper have left to try the startup thing again (which I think is a better fit for their skills and desires than evolving a big open source language). The team we have now, I believe, is much better aligned with what you're saying.

It sucks that we do have this baggage, but I hope we can improve our reputation over time. I'm hopeful we can — it took Java several tries before it found its footing.

Re: Announcing Dart 2 Stable and the Dart Web Platform

#98

Post by k__ »

woolvalley wrote: post #88
k__ wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flutter is probably the last attempt to get some Dart popularity. When Dart came out, Google build it to improve on JavaScript, by replacing it with a whole new language. Microsoft built TypeScript to integrate with JavaScript. I thought, "MS, right? Cobbling together some JS add-on, who will use that? Better get a whole now language that doesn't carry around that baggage from JS :D" I think Dart brought not enough n…

Fabric and reason have a native render target that doesn't involve browsers or wrapping some other UI library?

Fabric is the effort to make RN more competitive.

And Reason is just another syntax for OCaml, so it can compile to everything OCaml can, that includes "native".

Re: Announcing Dart 2 Stable and the Dart Web Platform

#99

Post by sbjs »

pcwalton wrote: post #92
sbjs wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what killed Dart is that they emphasized their plans to make Dart a first-class scripting language of Chrome, so that you could use instead of JavaScript. This had a lot of backlash from literally everyone, I think mostly because they were bit too hard by IE doing the exact same thing just a few years before. Only after a few years the Dart team changed courses and said "never mind about that VM-inside-Chrome…

> I think mostly because they were bit too hard by IE doing the exact same thing just a few years before. It's pretty simple, in my view: JS developers were happy with the language and didn't want a browser vendor trying to replace it. Remember that it was announced around the time that the new ES6 ("Harmony") features were generating a lot of excitement about the future of JS.

I think Dart started internal development around the same time CoffeeScript gained major popularity and brought attention to JS's desperate need to evolve, but they released at a bad time: when JS finally did start to evolve (as Harmony) which was a reaction to CoffeeScript in the first place. So CoffeeScript served its purpose of pushing JS forward, and most other compile-to-JS languages had no more purpose. I say most because some serve a different purpose than just being a slightly nicer JS, like how Elm piggy-backs on the familiarity of Haskell and provides a niche no-mutation environment, and TypeScript adds type-checking for those of us who can't write code as confidently without it. But the rest served their purpose, and Dart's dream of having its own VM inside Chrome was probably what killed it so quickly.

Re: Announcing Dart 2 Stable and the Dart Web Platform

#100

Post by munificent »

EugeneOZ wrote: post #79
darpa_escapee wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have a well-thought out argument, and not a quippy one-liner, I'd earnestly like to hear it. Dart's developers think otherwise[1]: > Q. Is Dart a statically typed language? > Yes, Dart 2 is statically typed. For more information, see Dart’s Type System. > With its combination of static and runtime checks, Dart has a sound type system, which guarantees that an expression of one type cannot produce a value of an…

> With its combination of static and runtime checks Do you personally use it? That "strong mode" is a theory-only thing, it doesn't work with any real code, only with code you wrote without real third-party libraries.

> only with code you wrote without real third-party libraries.

Your claim was true several years ago, but since then the entire ecosystem has migrated onto the new strict type system. It was a monumental amount of work, but, thanks to lots of effort from our users, we're there.

Aside from a small number of more-or-less dead packages, you should be able to use any third-party Dart packages you want while still using the new type system.

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