An update on Dart macros and data serialization • Hacker News Board

Re: An update on Dart macros and data serialization

#41

Post by kazinator » Wed, Jan 29, 2025, 11:03 PM UTC

kernal wrote: post #22

zigzag312 wrote: post #17

They should have just use C# for Flutter. Without investing significant time, like they did with Dart, they would have a language with a much bigger ecosystem that is faster, already has compile time code generation and better support for data than Dart. It supports ahead-of-time compilation and hot-reload. The only feature missing in C# is compilation to JS, but with WASM is that really needed? Biggest downside of C…

And Microsoft should have just used Java.

They did. They called in J++ and gave it extensions, leading to a schooyard scuffle with Sun. When the school principal said Sun were right, they went off sulking and made Dot Net.

Re: An update on Dart macros and data serialization

#42

Post by refulgentis » Wed, Jan 29, 2025, 11:04 PM UTC

donatj wrote: post #32

refulgentis wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Java should have just been C++ with a really nice garbage collector

And C++ should have just been Objective-C with saner invocation syntax.

And Objective-C should have just been Smalltalk without the C baggage

(is this the root NIH syndrome?! I'm guessing no, I'm only 36. maybe LISP enters the picture here?)

Re: An update on Dart macros and data serialization

#43

Post by mdhb » Wed, Jan 29, 2025, 11:04 PM UTC

api wrote: post #37

zigzag312 wrote: post #17

They should have just use C# for Flutter. Without investing significant time, like they did with Dart, they would have a language with a much bigger ecosystem that is faster, already has compile time code generation and better support for data than Dart. It supports ahead-of-time compilation and hot-reload. The only feature missing in C# is compilation to JS, but with WASM is that really needed? Biggest downside of C…

I think Go would have been the most logical choice, given that it's Google.

I think you are missing the fact that Dart is actually an incredibly nice language to work with in a way that Go absolutely is not.

Re: An update on Dart macros and data serialization

#44

Post by eseidel » Wed, Jan 29, 2025, 11:04 PM UTC

Alifatisk wrote: post #8

What will the Dart team focus on instead? I wish the cross-compilation issue was taken to a higher priority, I mean Flutter already kinda of solved it.

They talk about it some in the post, but my understanding is they're going to see if the can solve some of the motivating problems (e.g. json serialization) with simpler one-off solutions rather than a big general language feature.

Re: An update on Dart macros and data serialization

#45

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jan 29, 2025, 11:04 PM UTC

zigzag312 wrote: post #17

They should have just use C# for Flutter. Without investing significant time, like they did with Dart, they would have a language with a much bigger ecosystem that is faster, already has compile time code generation and better support for data than Dart. It supports ahead-of-time compilation and hot-reload. The only feature missing in C# is compilation to JS, but with WASM is that really needed? Biggest downside of C…

[deleted]

Re: An update on Dart macros and data serialization

#46

Post by paulddraper » Wed, Jan 29, 2025, 11:06 PM UTC

eseidel wrote: post #35

zigzag312 wrote: post #17

They should have just use C# for Flutter. Without investing significant time, like they did with Dart, they would have a language with a much bigger ecosystem that is faster, already has compile time code generation and better support for data than Dart. It supports ahead-of-time compilation and hot-reload. The only feature missing in C# is compilation to JS, but with WASM is that really needed? Biggest downside of C…

[Flutter founder here.] I'm pretty sure we did look at C# (and certainly a whole bunch of other languages). I don't actually recall why we didn't use C# at the time. I remember Go binaries were waaay to big, JS (what we originally wrote Flutter in) startup time was way too slow on iOS, Swift was too deeply tied to Apple (the standard library was closed source at that time), etc. It's possible that C# was too verbose…

I am curious as well.

Despite the "not invented at Google" swipe

* TypeScript wasn't invented at Google either, but adopted heavily.

* Angular was the first major project ever to use TS.

* And interestingly enough, Anders Hejlsberg contributed heavily to both.

Re: An update on Dart macros and data serialization

#47

Post by scythe » Wed, Jan 29, 2025, 11:06 PM UTC

kernal wrote: post #22

zigzag312 wrote: post #17

They should have just use C# for Flutter. Without investing significant time, like they did with Dart, they would have a language with a much bigger ecosystem that is faster, already has compile time code generation and better support for data than Dart. It supports ahead-of-time compilation and hot-reload. The only feature missing in C# is compilation to JS, but with WASM is that really needed? Biggest downside of C…

And Microsoft should have just used Java.

Microsoft had an underlying operating system that they wanted to rewrite substantially in C# on the .NET VM. They had a decent motivation for not having a core piece of Windows dependent on a product from another vendor that was competing in some of the same markets as their core product.

Google by contrast isn't nearly as invested in Dart as Microsoft was (and still is) in C#/.NET. Perhaps a better objection is that they should have just used Go — or a Go-binary-compatible language built on some of the same toolchain. (See also: Vala and Guile still don't play nice together as well as they should for two languages from the same project.)

Re: An update on Dart macros and data serialization

#48

Post by Salgat » Wed, Jan 29, 2025, 11:07 PM UTC

kernal wrote: post #22

zigzag312 wrote: post #17

They should have just use C# for Flutter. Without investing significant time, like they did with Dart, they would have a language with a much bigger ecosystem that is faster, already has compile time code generation and better support for data than Dart. It supports ahead-of-time compilation and hot-reload. The only feature missing in C# is compilation to JS, but with WASM is that really needed? Biggest downside of C…

And Microsoft should have just used Java.

C# was Microsoft's attempt to learn from Java's mistakes, which they very much succeeded at doing.

Re: An update on Dart macros and data serialization

#49

Post by elcritch » Wed, Jan 29, 2025, 11:10 PM UTC

ajross wrote: post #5

Maybe it's time to just recognize that lisp-style macros-as-language-syntax features just aren't worth the struggle and grief? The big metaprogramming feature traditionally implemented in macros, type generation, is already provided in some form by all major languages already. And an awful lot (and I mean an awful lot) of good work can be done at the string replacement level with cpp. And generating code upstream of…

Oh how I enjoy trying to compile and use projects where they use some complex home brew codegen system often written in a different language entirely [1]. Luckily they often use Python as part of some core build step which never breaks compatability in their regex librwry [2].

Yes macros can be a pain and should be limited, but in my experience, a couple hundred lines of macros replaces many thousands of lines code generators with complicated baroque build system integrations (ahem ROS2). The tradeoff is even worse when the language supports templates and compile time operations which can usually replace macros with even less code and are easier to understand. Though at least Go supports codegen properly with support in its official tooling.

1: https://github.com/google/flatbuffers/blob/master/src/idl_ge... 2: https://github.com/python/cpython/issues/94675

Re: An update on Dart macros and data serialization

#50

Post by smt88 » Wed, Jan 29, 2025, 11:12 PM UTC

eseidel wrote: post #35

zigzag312 wrote: post #17

They should have just use C# for Flutter. Without investing significant time, like they did with Dart, they would have a language with a much bigger ecosystem that is faster, already has compile time code generation and better support for data than Dart. It supports ahead-of-time compilation and hot-reload. The only feature missing in C# is compilation to JS, but with WASM is that really needed? Biggest downside of C…

[Flutter founder here.] I'm pretty sure we did look at C# (and certainly a whole bunch of other languages). I don't actually recall why we didn't use C# at the time. I remember Go binaries were waaay to big, JS (what we originally wrote Flutter in) startup time was way too slow on iOS, Swift was too deeply tied to Apple (the standard library was closed source at that time), etc. It's possible that C# was too verbose…

I'm not going to log in to Xitter to read the rest of his tweets, but it doesn't seem like Miguel regrets using C# or is particularly in love with Dart.

He's very complimentary of the goals and governance of Flutter, which is certainly more important than a language choice between two respectable languages.

I do think C# is by far the best mainstream language, but good IDE support and library ecosystem are the dealmakers/breakers for me when choosing a stack for a project.