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Dart language

dartlang.org

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Re: Dart language

#81

Post by skrebbel »

cromwellian wrote: post #53
skrebbel wrote: post #33

A language that compiles to JavaScript really needs better browser support. Decent web apps use feature detection to provide graceful degradation for browsers from the stone age. Dart breaks this by making it impossible to run any code at all. I mean, "IE9 support coming soon!", what the hell? What about IE6? This isn't a CSS style or an animation library we're talking about.

This is not a product launch.

The lack of browser support implies architectural choices that will always make old browsers lag behind. It means that the generated JS uses modern JS features. If it would be easy to support older browsers, they would've done so already - at least to some extent. The fact that it compiles only to JS for the very latest versions of a small number of browsers gives me the impression that a lot of language/compilation choices are closely tied to these new JS features. This, in turn, implies that supporting older JS versions is non-trivial.

Maybe I'm wrong, that'd be nice.

Re: Dart language

#82

Post by masklinn »

munificent wrote: post #73
vegai wrote: post #2

Creating an object: Greeter greeter = new Greeter() or var greeter = new Greeter() Defining a constant: static final myConst = 1 Plus there are classes, interfaces... It's just Java?

> var greeter = new Greeter() Well, it's hard to get that much better than that. > Plus there are classes, interfaces... It's just Java? Java didn't invent classes. It certainly looks a lot like Java, but it's more Smalltalk under the hood.

> Well, it's hard to get that much better than that.

    var greeter = Greeter()
there, no need for `new`.

Alternatively,

    var greeter = Greeter.new()
or

    var greeter = greeter new
if it's not acceptable to have arbitrary callable objects.

> it's more Smalltalk under the hood.

The speed and wide-spread use of Smalltalk with the regularity, flexibility and terseness of Java's syntax? That sounds like a recipe for success.

Re: Dart language

#83

Post by munificent »

masklinn wrote: post #77
munificent wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The language isn't done yet. Now is the time to let us know if you want semicolons to go away. I know some of us on the team do too, but public interest will help a lot.

> The language isn't done yet. Now is the time to let us know if you want semicolons to go away. Seeing how Go, which "wasn't done yet" either, handled external feedback... I don't see why anyone would have hopes for dart.

I've been very pleasantly surprised at how open to feedback Lars, Kasper, and the gang have been with Dart. One of my big concerns joining the team was that it would be like Go which seems like a locked castle. So far, it's been much better than I expected.

Re: Dart language

#84

Post by clownz0r »

masklinn wrote: post #74
zohebv wrote: post #65

From whatever little I see, I am already hating it :-) This looks like Java for Javascript, if that makes any kind of sense. We are in the year 2011, PL design has progressed so much since 1990 that such an anachronism is unpardonable. I sincerely wish that companies like Google focus on hiring the right kind of person for designing programming languages. What is frustrating is that there are so many people who can d…

> This looks like Java for Javascript, if that makes any kind of sense. It completely does. And I love that it manages to be completely incoherent with Go, the other "Google Language". That's so symptomatic of what google does on that front.

Weird that a systems language and a web language are different, huh?

Re: Dart language

#85

Post by moomin »

zohebv wrote: post #65

From whatever little I see, I am already hating it :-) This looks like Java for Javascript, if that makes any kind of sense. We are in the year 2011, PL design has progressed so much since 1990 that such an anachronism is unpardonable. I sincerely wish that companies like Google focus on hiring the right kind of person for designing programming languages. What is frustrating is that there are so many people who can d…

I've got to say, I'm looking at it and thinking "That's it?". It looks embarrassingly like C# to me.

Other than that: it's got coffeescript's fast initializer syntax, but it's not as concise. It's got types but AFAICT no type inference. No destructuring either.

Only thing I can see it's really got going for it is some basic types which could have been provided as a standard Javascript library (and probably will become one...)

Re: Dart language

#86

Post by lisperforlife »

munificent wrote: post #51
timclark wrote: post #17

Aaaarghhh! It is full of semicolons. Is it really necessary in the 21st century to create a language that terminates lines with semicolons? I am sure I have seen some other languages in the past that get by just fine without them.

The language isn't done yet. Now is the time to let us know if you want semicolons to go away. I know some of us on the team do too, but public interest will help a lot.

Yes please. No semicolons. And please make it look a lot more like CoffeeScript than Java.

Re: Dart language

#87

Post by cromwellian »

masklinn wrote: post #74
zohebv wrote: post #65

From whatever little I see, I am already hating it :-) This looks like Java for Javascript, if that makes any kind of sense. We are in the year 2011, PL design has progressed so much since 1990 that such an anachronism is unpardonable. I sincerely wish that companies like Google focus on hiring the right kind of person for designing programming languages. What is frustrating is that there are so many people who can d…

> This looks like Java for Javascript, if that makes any kind of sense. It completely does. And I love that it manages to be completely incoherent with Go, the other "Google Language". That's so symptomatic of what google does on that front.

Go is a systems programming language, not a web programming language. It's like saying Javascript is incoherent with C.

Re: Dart language

#88

Post by clownz0r »

danmaz74 wrote: post #76
munificent wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The language isn't done yet. Now is the time to let us know if you want semicolons to go away. I know some of us on the team do too, but public interest will help a lot.

I'll give you my votes then: - no braces where avoidable, no semicolons where avoidable - release early a free, open source reference development environment that really helps in developing with Dart. The biggest pain with Javascript, imho, is in the lack of development tools really thought out for it, and not just an adaptation of Java/C/whatever other editors - if you develop said IDE as a web-IDE, even better (why…

You raise a good point. I'd like to see more about testing Dart.

Re: Dart language

#89

Post by spaam »

rjd wrote: post #16
russellallen wrote: post #5

Hmm. A little underwhelmed so far.

Yeppp... its like getting a birthday present. You get a moment of excitement and intrigue. You unwrap it, and .. socks. You know I'll probably use those socks someday, but its not what I was really hoping for.

best comment ;D

Re: Dart language

#90

Post by munificent »

danmaz74 wrote: post #76
munificent wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The language isn't done yet. Now is the time to let us know if you want semicolons to go away. I know some of us on the team do too, but public interest will help a lot.

I'll give you my votes then: - no braces where avoidable, no semicolons where avoidable - release early a free, open source reference development environment that really helps in developing with Dart. The biggest pain with Javascript, imho, is in the lack of development tools really thought out for it, and not just an adaptation of Java/C/whatever other editors - if you develop said IDE as a web-IDE, even better (why…

I like everything you propose here. Dart is earlier in development than I think most people realize, and I really hope we can get to something like what you're listing. Definitely self-hosting and a self-hosted IDE would be on my love-to-have list. As a testing nerd, integrating testing would definitely be on it too.
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