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Dartium: Google’s New Dart Programming Language Comes to Chromium

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Re: Dartium: Google’s New Dart Programming Language Comes to Chromium

#21

Post by mistercow »

georgemcbay wrote: post #19
sorenbs wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As it stands today a Chrome user is no more valuable to Google than an IE user (well, apart from google being default search provider). But any web user today is more valuable than a web user 3 years ago because the browsers deliver a much better experience now, causing the user to spend more time on the web. Chrome played a major part in this development.

"As it stands today a Chrome user is no more valuable to Google than an IE user (well, apart from google being default search provider)" I'm not sure your caveat is needed -- on a new installation the first thing Chrome does is ask you what search provider you want to use, you're just as free to pick Bing as Google.

Chrome does this, but IE does not. That alone means that a much higher proportion of Chrome users will use Google than IE users. Then factor in the relative name recognition for the two search engines...

Re: Dartium: Google’s New Dart Programming Language Comes to Chromium

#23

Post by tikhonj »

afsina wrote: post #10

I for one welcome Dartium. I need to learn the language and JS compilation was an unnecessary barrier. I care less about people's whining. A language that does not suck? Check. Is it multi platform? Check. Can it work in other browsers if necessary? Check. Is it open source? check. Can it run in server? Check. Is it fast? Check.

That sounds like a checklist for JavaScript too...

Re: Dartium: Google’s New Dart Programming Language Comes to Chromium

#24

Post by nilsbunger »

sorenbs wrote: post #16
ootachi wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're pretty naïve if you think that "Google doesn't care if Chrome is perceived as faster". That's been the entire thrust of their marketing, quite literally from day one.

As it stands today a Chrome user is no more valuable to Google than an IE user (well, apart from google being default search provider). But any web user today is more valuable than a web user 3 years ago because the browsers deliver a much better experience now, causing the user to spend more time on the web. Chrome played a major part in this development.

A chrome user is more valuable to google than another browser user:

google paid 1 billion dollars for a search deal to Mozilla with ~30% mkt share. If google had never built chrome, Mozilla share might be 50% or more today. The search deal would've been commensurately more expensive.

The point is, google doesn't have to pay for search engine placement for a chrome user.

Re: Dartium: Google’s New Dart Programming Language Comes to Chromium

#25

Post by sparkie »

afsina wrote: post #10

I for one welcome Dartium. I need to learn the language and JS compilation was an unnecessary barrier. I care less about people's whining. A language that does not suck? Check. Is it multi platform? Check. Can it work in other browsers if necessary? Check. Is it open source? check. Can it run in server? Check. Is it fast? Check.

You could take one of dozens of language and mark "check" for each of those points. (And the first one is questionable anyway, there are better languages). So why Dart rather than some other language? What's it's real selling points?

Perhaps the strongest thing going for Dart is that there's a big company with resources behind it. Unfortunately, this is also the worst thing about it. Google's lack of effort to involve other browser vendors and the community at large in it's development is ultimately the reason why not many are interested, aside from whether or not the language is any good.

Re: Dartium: Google’s New Dart Programming Language Comes to Chromium

#26

Post by slewis »

ootachi wrote: post #13
slewis wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google doesn't care if Chrome is perceived as faster. They want the entire web to be faster. They use Chrome to push the envelope.

I think you're pretty naïve if you think that "Google doesn't care if Chrome is perceived as faster". That's been the entire thrust of their marketing, quite literally from day one.

I should have said "Google considers a fast Chrome a means to an end". That's what I meant.

Re: Dartium: Google’s New Dart Programming Language Comes to Chromium

#27

Post by firefoxman1 »

tikhonj wrote: post #23
afsina wrote: post #10

I for one welcome Dartium. I need to learn the language and JS compilation was an unnecessary barrier. I care less about people's whining. A language that does not suck? Check. Is it multi platform? Check. Can it work in other browsers if necessary? Check. Is it open source? check. Can it run in server? Check. Is it fast? Check.

That sounds like a checklist for JavaScript too...

My thoughts exactly. How about:

Does it have closures and functions-as-object passing? (amazing feature of js)

Does it support prototypal inheritance? (also great)

I honestly don't know if Dart does these two, but they're pretty important to me. Does anyone know?

Edit: after a little research it looks like the answers are "Yes" and "No". I'd be willing to try it then.

Re: Dartium: Google’s New Dart Programming Language Comes to Chromium

#29

Post by spankalee »

ConstantineXVI wrote: post #4

I hope Google isn't going to solely rely on Chrome having a Dart VM to increase Dart performance. As it stands; no other browser is interested in the Dart VM, so your app will only benefit from the speed in Chrome while other browsers are at the mercy of the efficiency of the Dart->JS compiler. If the compiler can produce near-JS performance I wish them and Dart developers well, otherwise using Dart will only handica…

One of Dart's design goals is to be able to be compiled to efficient Javascript. That does limit some of the choices that the language designers can make, but it means that there should be good performance on all modern browsers.

The VM presumably takes advantage of the slightly less dynamic nature of Dart to make more agressive optimizations than V8.

Re: Dartium: Google’s New Dart Programming Language Comes to Chromium

#30

Post by sreque »

firefoxman1 wrote: post #27
tikhonj wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like a checklist for JavaScript too...

My thoughts exactly. How about: Does it have closures and functions-as-object passing? (amazing feature of js) Does it support prototypal inheritance? (also great) I honestly don't know if Dart does these two, but they're pretty important to me. Does anyone know? Edit: after a little research it looks like the answers are "Yes" and "No". I'd be willing to try it then.

Every language under the sun has closures and first class function objects now (Even C if you count llvm-specific extensions, and Java if you count one method interfaces as a suitable workaround until version 8).

Also, Javascript's version of prototypal inheritance isn't very good. Name me one thing you can do well with Javascript's inheritance that you can't do well in any other dynamic language with some notion of objects having property dictionaries (Perl, Python, Ruby, Lua, etc.).

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