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Angular Announces AngularDart

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Re: Angular Announces AngularDart

#91

Post by xixixao »

milkshakes wrote: post #81
nateabele wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's nice that you work somewhere within the vast organization that is Google, but again, this information comes from a source close to the Angular core team about instructions that the core team have received. Unless you're somehow party to this (which you have indicated you're not), I don't see what you can add here.

spankalee responded to you already[1], how much more clear can people be? [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6678798

"Teams" are made out of people. Managers, engineers. Not all people on the team might have agreed.

To the much more important point, the development of important features stalled for AngularJS as the team was busy working on Dart version. This is the main problem.

Re: Angular Announces AngularDart

#92

Post by xixixao »

spankalee wrote: post #76
Helianthus wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There might not be a formalized 'grand plan,' but Dart doesn't have the open, cheerful intentions of CoffeeScript. It's being designed as a javascript replacement. Google's overbearing intention is obvious. You're right: Dart is, functionally, another CoffeeScript, but that's despite Google's plan--ok, 'experiment'--not by design. >So, please, can we discuss this on its merits Your criticisms are shared. That's what…

What are "open, cheerful intentions"? Open? Dart has been open-sourced for 2 years now - only having its proof-of-concept done in-house before the announcement. Cheerful? Not sure how one language that compiles to JS is more "cheerful" than an other, but we're really a cheerful bunch in person. I'm sure you could have a beer with us if you'd like :) As to the your and the OP's point about Dart being another CoffeeScr…

There is one major difference between Dart and CoffeeScript: The Angular team didn't have to take a 3 month holiday to make Angular work with CoffeeScript. If Dart was just another compile-to-JS language, then they wouldn't have to bother at all.

Yet, CoffeeScript is not just a different syntax - for one, it changes declarations and scoping rules. That's a pretty big semantic change (comparison operators etc. follow).

Re: Angular Announces AngularDart

#93

Post by camus2 »

Good for Dart users. And competition is healthy.

Javascript needs some challenge, just like Flash forced HTML to evolve.

So this is a good thing. Congratulations. And devs should know this, nothing is set in stone on the web.

Re: Angular Announces AngularDart

#94

Post by spankalee »

Helianthus wrote: post #83
spankalee wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are "open, cheerful intentions"? Open? Dart has been open-sourced for 2 years now - only having its proof-of-concept done in-house before the announcement. Cheerful? Not sure how one language that compiles to JS is more "cheerful" than an other, but we're really a cheerful bunch in person. I'm sure you could have a beer with us if you'd like :) As to the your and the OP's point about Dart being another CoffeeScr…

... I was talking ecosystem niche and I think that obvious. Both languages have to compile to javascript to run in the browser, and it's going to stay that way. You might not be involved enough in the politics of programmer mindshare, but plainly: Dart is attempting a takeover. Takeovers can be smiles and open source, but they're still takeovers, and this one is doomed to fail. If you don't see that, you're focused o…

No one is forcing anyone to use Dart, anymore than people are forced to use CoffeeScript, Haxe or pyjamas. Many engineers at Google want a sane alternative to JavaScript, and we think it'll save thousands of hours of developer time, millions of developer dollars, and also _user_ time and money as they benefit from more stable apps with more features. JavaScript is not going anyway. If developers flock to Dart, presumably we've offered something beneficial to them.

I joined the Dart team because I thought is was a worthy and important project that could beneficially impact a very large number of people. I _do_ think about these things, they're quite important to me. The goals of more sane semantics, more optimizable structure, and better toolability and tools are to me, and a lot of other engineers, incredibly reasonable and beneficial. That's actually the entire point of the project is to be more reasonable and beneficial than the alternatives :)

If fact, I think I'll use that as my informal Dart tagline: "Dart, reasonable and beneficial!"

More seriously, Dart is created by people who think that JS is broken and we need an alternative. I hope you're not claiming that that's really an unreasonable opinion, and that the only reasonable point of view is that JavaScript should always be the only language used to develop web applications. I'm sure reasonable people can disagree about the degree of brokenness of JavaScript, and about different solutions to the problems.

Re: Angular Announces AngularDart

#95

Post by steveklabnik »

jgon wrote: post #90
wamatt wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BrendenEich said this of Dart, 2 years ago on HN, and might help explain OP's sentiment: For the record, I'm not worried about JS being replaced by a better language. I am working to do that within Ecma TC39, by evolving JS aggressively. The leaked Google doc's assertion that this is impossible and that a "clean break" is required to make significant improvements is nonsense, a thin rationale for going it alone rathe…

And here we are 2 years later, TC39 is still nowhere in sight, Javascript is still, in the eyes of anyone with an ounce of taste, a terrible language for large scale development and Dart continues to iterate while offering all of it's advancements as it compiles to JS. I honestly don't even care if Dart doesn't take off, maybe clojurescript or something similar will instead. But my god something needs to happen in th…

> TC39 is nowhere in sight

Uhhhh TC39 meets bi-monthly. If you meant ECMASCRIPT 6, it's targeting finalization next month. Furthermore, future releases are set to be much, much faster than previous ones.

Re: Angular Announces AngularDart

#96

Post by Helianthus »

eco wrote: post #33
Helianthus wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

developer mindshare. Check tag count for questions on SO; 4500 for CoffeeScript, 1500 for Dart. Not to mention the violent revulsion many people (myself included) are expressing in this topic.

That's not a very good metric. CoffeeScript is twice the age of Dart.

Fair point; I was trying to get github numbers and got sidetracked.

Re: Angular Announces AngularDart

#97

Post by floitsch »

nailer wrote: post #89
cletus wrote: post #61

I'm really starting to get tired of the cynical and snarky negativity on HN. Whoever thinks this is part of some grand plan to force Dart down our throats clearly has no clue whatsoever about how Google works. Standard disclaimer: I'm a Google engineer and these opinions are my own and don't reflect those of my employer. Google is a really large company with >10,000 engineers. A lot of what we do starts as grassroots…

When dart was released its authors asked for and received, some very specific feedback about syntax which they mentioned they'd be amenable to changing. Nothing has changed. Much like android dart is controlled by a small group of engineers in Google. Where's the source code to the current HEAD of dart? I'm pretty sure it's not on GitHub. What features are planned for the next release? I'm fairly sure dart-discuss do…

Current HEAD of dart: https://code.google.com/p/dart/source/browse/#svn%2Fbranches...

Most of the work is done completely in the open. See some of the language discussion writeups: https://groups.google.com/a/dartlang.org/forum/#!searchin/mi...

We went public two years ago when the language was still in its infancy so that developers could provide their feedback.

Edit: contrary to your claim we did get feedback and acted on it. Some changes were rejected (like putting the types behind the variables), but it's normal that not every request can be accepted.

If you have suggestions on how we can make Dart even more open-source I would be genuinely interested in hearing them.

Re: Angular Announces AngularDart

#98

Post by btford »

xixixao wrote: post #91
milkshakes wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

spankalee responded to you already[1], how much more clear can people be? [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6678798

"Teams" are made out of people. Managers, engineers. Not all people on the team might have agreed. To the much more important point, the development of important features stalled for AngularJS as the team was busy working on Dart version. This is the main problem.

> the development of important features stalled for AngularJS as the team was busy working on Dart version.

Not true. Google grew the team. Take a look at the activity on Github. The velocity has been consistently high throughout the development of the Dart fork: https://github.com/angular/angular.js/pulse

If there was some important feature you wanted, you are always able to submit a PR yourself. That's how open source works.

Re: Angular Announces AngularDart

#99

Post by rdtsc »

nateabele wrote: post #2

Sigh ... I knew this was going to happen. :-/ This is part of Google's strategy to push Dart in the browser. Soon they're going to start developing Angular primarily in Dart, and 'back-porting' features to JavaScript. Sadly, this is the nature of so-called "Open Source" at Google.

> Sigh... I knew this was going to happen. :-/

Yay... I was hoping this would happen :-)

> This is part of Google's strategy to push Dart in the browser.

I know, great, right.

> Sadly, this is the nature of so-called "Open Source" at Google.

I criticize Google often but yeah this is great. Good for Google. It is more than what Oracle or Microsoft or others do.

My opinion is this -- JS is a shitty language. It was a shitty language, no matter how many "good parts" books will be published or how many frameworks one builds on top of it -- it is still an ugly language that makes me want to tear my hair out every time I use it. You love it, great. I hate it. I was hoping from day one someone, some company, would find a good replacement. I can tolerate compiling to it and treating it like assembler. It is even better if it gets bypassed altogether.

There were other posts here about JS's warts, so I am not the only one who welcome any other sane, normal, language to replace it.

Anyway, great work Google, keep releasing new versions of Dart, Dart UI, Dart IDE and so on.

Re: Angular Announces AngularDart

#100

Post by rdtsc »

nateabele wrote: post #10
recuter wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, this was already announced months ago, so it already happened. Secondly, Google is a big company and some teams within it wanted to use Dart, whereas otheres want to use vanila javascript and Angular, so now you have both. Thirdly, Angular is in the process of being broken apart to modular components for 2.0, it also now cross-pollinates with another Google-y called Web Components. In future, the equive…

You're able to regurgitate bullet points off a slide deck. Good job. Edit: [source & details redacted] This 'FUD' comes directly from the Angular core team.

You are able to spread hate and FUD as well. Good job.
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