Dart language • Hacker News Board

Re: Dart language

#161

Post by clownz0r » Mon, Oct 10, 2011, 10:05 AM UTC

perfunctory wrote: post #118

Funny to read all these comments just a few minutes after the announcement. I bet nobody had enough time to explore the language in any significant way. Yet very strong opinions already.

On the contrary, I was able to go through all of the tutorials, follow 2 separate live-tweetings, and start looking into the source before the keynote was over; I'd imagine many here did the same.

Re: Dart language

#162

Post by seddona » Mon, Oct 10, 2011, 10:06 AM UTC

You guys need to check out ActionScript, your re-creating it.

Re: Dart language

#163

Post by SurfScore » Mon, Oct 10, 2011, 10:10 AM UTC

I feel like at this point in the development of technology, we should be moving towards less programming languages (and ultimately less programming), not more. I haven't spent hours studying Dart, but what does Google hope to accomplish with this, besides getting their skin in the programming language game (see Microsoft). It doesn't really do much else that other languages can't, at least not that I can see. I mean, YOU CONVERT IT TO JAVASCRIPT just to get it to work! Come on! Programming languages are a lot like web browsers. There are some that are more suited for certain things than others, but having so many creates more problems than it solves (especially because they try to do little, insignificant things differently, just for the sake of being different).

Re: Dart language

#164

Post by cromwellian » Mon, Oct 10, 2011, 10:15 AM UTC

nzonbi wrote: post #156

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…

Agree with parent comment. My opinion, so far: Overall: uninspired. Below what I was expecting. Probably good for Google goals (tooling, migrating developers, etc) The language is somewhat interesting, but unfortunately saddened by an incredibly boring syntax. At this point, I am thinking that they would have been better off just going with the Go language for this. Looks like something good to migrate fleets of java…

Default interface implementations are nothing new. In Scala for example, if you create a Map, you can get it to automatically construct a MapImpl, without having to know it. A really common case in many code bases is 1 implementing class, and 1 mock/testing class, and this fits the common case really well.

I think "beauty" is really a subjective consideration when it comes to programming languages.

Re: Dart language

#165

Post by ErikCorry » Mon, Oct 10, 2011, 10:18 AM UTC

Achshar wrote: post #160

moomin wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

V8 with threading? interesting.

V8 has isolates already. They are intended to be used for implementing WebWorkers.

Re: Dart language

#166

Post by bergie » Mon, Oct 10, 2011, 10:21 AM UTC

clownz0r wrote: post #111

nixarn wrote: post #105

I like it. And if they make it work great on the server as well, that's a big plus. A google supported node.js would be great.

Even better, a Google supported node.js with actors .

Hook.io seems to be a reasonably nice actors implementation for Node.js

Re: Dart language

#167

Post by ErikCorry » Mon, Oct 10, 2011, 10:24 AM UTC

jmesserly wrote: post #108

munificent wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And pretty much all functional languages get by just fine without semicolons (Lisp, ML, Haskell, etc).

ML uses semicolons.

Re: Dart language

#168

Post by sambeau » Mon, Oct 10, 2011, 10:24 AM UTC

surrealize wrote: post #124

secoif wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Programmers care about it because it adds extra noise to your program. If you semantically, and naturally, communicate "end of statement" with a line break to human readers, why should you have to say it again with a semicolon to the compiler? Programming languages should focus on being DRY.

For human readers we use periods, not line breaks.

Code is more like poetry.

Re: Dart language

#169

Post by frzn » Mon, Oct 10, 2011, 10:25 AM UTC

Will this language gain more traction than Go? What do you think?

Re: Dart language

#170

Post by discreteevent » Mon, Oct 10, 2011, 10:27 AM UTC

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'm in two minds about it. Firstly I was hoping for something like a simplified Scala or a slightly extended Go. Its not either. On the other hand the surprise of seeing it coming out looking so mainstream (i.e. its a mix of javascript and java) is a reminder that really the language doesn't matter that much. The blub paradox is not half as important as one intuitively gives it credit for. See Peter Norvig's comments about how C++ programmers can be as productive as Lispers. Look at something like the iphone. The implementation behind the shiny interface is boringly mainstream, C, objective-C with standard OO GUI framework. Like it or not Google and Apple are about engineering and getting things done. From that point of view something like Haskell might improve things slightly but not half enough to make a significant difference to the end product. i.e. it just doesn't matter.

In summary when I saw the language this morning my first thought was: "Nothing to see here". But as a result my second was: "Get back to work". Maybe that's not so bad.