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Dart language

dartlang.org

91–100 of 504 posts

Re: Dart language

#91
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…

Oleg Kiselyov works for the U.S Navy. Don't think he was available. His essays on programming and computation are examples of an astounding mind - http://okmij.org/ftp/Computation/

Re: Dart language

#92
post #11

I am most excited about the concurrency model! "Concurrency is supported via actor-like entities called isolates. An isolate is a unit of concurrency. It has its own memory and its own thread of control. Isolates communicate by message passing (10.14.4). No state is ever shared between isolates. Isolates are created by spawning (10.11)" http://www.dartlang.org/docs/spec/dartLangSpec.pdf I wonder how they compile this…

Well, you can implement pretty much everything you just described as a library. The only thing missing is preventing memory sharing, but that you can sort out at compile time.

An interesting question is if this means V8 is gaining threads.

Re: Dart language

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We have a rudimentary unit test framework [1] that we've been using for the samples, though we're still playing with different styles. Personally, I'm fond of the Jasmine-inspired stuff I tried to slap together here [2]. This is of course different from the testing infrastructure for the language itself, which is its own thing.

    [1] https://code.google.com/p/dart/source/browse/branches/bleeding_edge/dart/#dart%2Fclient%2Ftesting%2Funittest
    [2] https://code.google.com/p/dart/source/browse/branches/bleeding_edge/dart/client/tests/client/view/ViewTests.dart

Re: Dart language

#95
post #37

If you're going to go to the trouble of creating a JavaScript replacement, making something more like Java is the wrong way to go IMO. CoffeeScript is a lot more palatable.

CoffeeScript basically simplifies (and does a pretty good job, imo) existing JavaScript language features. Whereas, Dart adds classes and interfaces and a few other neat things.

Admittedly, however, I do cringe whenever I see things like x.compareTo(y) or X x = new X();

Re: Dart language

#96
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they should not be mandatory

If they're not mandatory, they should be out altogether unless required. Making them just optional is a path straight to js-land weird edge cases.

That's not true. Go, Python, Ruby and Scala all have optional semicolons without insanity. It's just that JavaScript's specific semantics for semicolon insertion (instead of newline elision!) are batshit crazy.

Re: Dart language

#97
A language that has type hints class keyword, and interfaces, I really think Google should have been better off implementing ES.next stuff... This is one of the most pointless projects Google has ever done, it doesn't solve any web developer problems, it's just the 999999th language.

They should have just embraced Coffee script.

Re: Dart language

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> there, no need for `new`.

Agreed. I didn't say you couldn't get better at all, just not much better. I'd personally be in favor of ditching new (or conversely making it a method on the class).

> The speed and wide-spread use of Smalltalk with the regularity, flexibility and terseness of Java's syntax?

Oh, you. You may be right. Making a new language is crazy, especially if you're aiming for widespread adoption. Still, you have to try, right?

Dart is definitely more terse and more flexible than Java. Maybe not perfect, but it's heading in the right direction. Dart is no DSL-friendly beauty like Ruby, but I think:

    var odds = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5].filter((i) => i % 2 == 1);
is pretty tolerable without being novel enough to scare people that have never programmed outside of a curly brace language.

Re: Dart language

#100

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.

I've been convinced of "less typing means less bugs", so I prefer no brackets, no semicolons, short reserved words, etc.
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