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Dart language

dartlang.org

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Re: Dart language

#301

Post by 6ren »

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…

It sounds like there's a lot of PL innovators† here on HN, who value new technology for its intrinsic value, rather than for its benefits.

I would expect PL theory to deliver great benefits at about the same rate as for other fields, e.g. that pure mathematics does for physics - some of it does; though it's common for it to be reinvented independently by people trying to solve specific problems.

BTW: Notwithstanding the over-general flame-bait title, I think his "types are anti-modular" is really just making the point that, while interfaces reduce your dependence on implementation, now you depend on interfaces. i.e. The problem with using types to hide decisions that you think will change is if your prediction about what will change is wrong. "On the Criteria to Be Used in Decomposing Systems Into Modules" http://www.cs.umd.edu/class/spring2003/cmsc838p/Design/crite...

Perhaps one solution is to specify all the types you use in a module, internally; and provide a mechanism for converting between equivalent types at the boundary, to remove the dependency while facilitating interoperation. This mechanism acts as a buffer or glue (or middleware) - a kind of interface between interfaces if you will.

† Although the technology adoption lifecycle gives the impression that a new technology with interesting properties is just the beginning of great things, the vast majority of new things do not become massively successful - it's just that the lifecycle is based on those that were. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_lifecycle

Re: Dart language

#302

Post by tolmasky »

sambeau wrote: post #257
ConstantineXVI wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oddly enough, if in-browser Java had "won", we'd already have such a thing.

True. But in return we would have had to endure 10 years of in-browser Java.

We would have just built something else on the JVM. You could be writing Ruby in the browser with JRuby, or Python in the browser with Jython, or Scala. This would be a much better world (tooling and performance-wise) than the current compile to high level JS strategy.

Re: Dart language

#303

Post by nmcfarl »

dextorious wrote: post #284
cubicle67 wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

someString.append(System.getProperty("line.separator")); vs some_string += "\n" Edit: Someone's in disagreement with me, so I'll try and clarify. I'd classify boring code as code where the intent gets lost in the syntax/language or other constructs the maintainer of the code doesn't care about but are required anyway. Trying to open and read a file in Java is probably a better example as the intent (open this file an…

Well, for one you can probably make your own "+=" for strings, if not available, since Dart has operator overloading. Also, System.getProperty("line.separator") does not translate to n"\n". The first makes your program more portable. Of course it could be made accesible easier, eg as a constant System.NEWLINE or something. [UPDATE] Downvote? Really? Because someone thinks "\n" is the same as "line.separator"?

Of course they could have taken perl's tact and defined "\n" to mean System.NEWLINE not 0x0A.

That would have been an improvement right there.

Re: Dart language

#304

Post by pacala »

dextorious wrote: post #290
pacala wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Systems language: move data from point A to point B. Web language: move data from point A to point B.

Airplane: move people from point A to point B. Boat: move people from point A to point B.

Voiture: transport des personnes du point A au point B

Car : move people from point A to point B

Re: Dart language

#305

Post by nathanwdavis »

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.

Please allow type inference wherever possible:

I shouldn't need to write 'Point p = new Point(2, 3);'

var p = new Point(2,3); should be inferred as a Point

Re: Dart language

#306

Post by minikomi »

ohyes wrote: post #285

I was hoping for something like the Dylan language. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dylan_programming_language It was created in the 1990s and it still looks innovative, even compared to a lot of the new 'hot commodity' languages like python and ruby. I knew it wouldn't happen. If a big corporation like Google put money into something like that, I think it would dominate the market. But what they have delivered here isn…

I like it... It's kind of like schemey-ruby.

Re: Dart language

#307

Post by masklinn »

dextorious wrote: post #286
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…

"Microsoft hired Anders Hejlsberg for .Net which I don't think was a good idea, he is a great engineer but not a PL theory expert." Wow. And I thought nobody in their right minds would question Hejlsberg's chops or the work he did for .Net. He is "not a PL theory expert"? Great. We need less of them in mainstream language design and more pragmatism.

> And I thought nobody in their right minds would question Hejlsberg's chops or the work he did for .Net.

Why not? C# 1.0 was terrible and most of the version since have been exercises in trying to fix it by piling more stuff on, in order to replace previous tentative fixes which did not work for any value of "work" worth using because they lacked generality.

> We need less of them in mainstream language design and more pragmatism.

I hope that's a joke, PL theory experts are nowhere to be seen in mainstream language designs (some have managed to get a claw or two into C# to add actually useful features like... lambdas...), and the "pragmatists" have a field days reinventing problems (not solutions) instead (hello, Go)

Re: Dart language

#308

Post by LeafStorm »

rdtsc wrote: post #247
nailer wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's almost exactly what coffeescript is. With Source Mapping in browsers, it also means you'll be able to get a .coffee line in your tracebacks too.

I agree. Yes, I would have liked to just have coffeescript as their new language. Maybe they could have just supported direct native execution on Chrome. Maybe Firefox would have followed.

CoffeeScript solves most of the problems with JavaScript's syntax, but the problem they're trying to solve here isn't the syntax, it's the structure and semantics.

Re: Dart language

#309

Post by masklinn »

ohyes wrote: post #285

I was hoping for something like the Dylan language. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dylan_programming_language It was created in the 1990s and it still looks innovative, even compared to a lot of the new 'hot commodity' languages like python and ruby. I knew it wouldn't happen. If a big corporation like Google put money into something like that, I think it would dominate the market. But what they have delivered here isn…

> But what they have delivered here isn't even interesting.

Not a big surprise. PL specialists (let alone theorists) have no place at google. Just look at the previous language coming from outside Google... Go.

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