Angular Announces AngularDart

http://news.dartlang.org/2013/11/angular-announces-angulardart.html

by mushishi • 13 years ago

181 175 13 years ago

news.dartlang.org

nateabele4• 13 years ago

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.

steeve• 13 years ago

This. Let's pray this doesn't happen.

quest882• 13 years ago

Luckily if someone feels Angular starts to become neglected someone can fork it and actively contribute.

Also, since dart compiles to JS, it could be no back-porting will be necessary.

recuter• 13 years ago

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 equivelent of directives (Your own <x-thingy> tags) will be a native web standard, Mozilla is also working on it.

This all amounts to a sort of polyfill to the future and most of the core of Angular will be thrown away if things work out. You won't need it.

These are all good things. I don't understand your need for FUD.

nateabele4• 13 years ago

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.

Touche• 13 years ago

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.

Specifically who?

Oculus• 13 years ago

I imagine they'll give up once they realize all the steam behind AngularJS won't easily transfer over to Dart.

btian2• 13 years ago

Well Dart can be compiled to JavaScript. What's not open source about Dart or Angular?

Bahamut2• 13 years ago

It may be open source, but it makes it more difficult to work with existing js libraries, and shoehorns you into a particular environment that is not standard frontend (html, css, js). Sure, Dart may compile down to js, but that adds another layer to a build process, and increases complexity unnecessarily.

As a fairly knowledgeable user of Angular & sometime contributor, this is a disturbing rumor.

spankalee12• 13 years ago

I work at Google and on Dart, and I have worked with the Angular team on their Dart port. This is not part of any strategy to push Dart. This port exists because teams at Google want to use both Angular and Dart, and the Angular team decided to make it happen.

golergka2• 13 years ago

the nature of so-called "Open Source" at Google

I don't understand why did you put "Open Source" in quotes there.

Did Google take Angular of the internet? Did they not put AngularJS out to the world, open sourced? Did they forbid you from forking Angular, working on it, and create a refuge for all "abandoned" developers?

rdtsc15• 13 years ago

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.

pcwalton3• 13 years ago

It is even better if it gets bypassed altogether.

That won't happen. With the amount of JavaScript on the Web, JS is immortal. All you can do is to add another language alongside it.

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.

But it won't be replaced.

ahoge3• 13 years ago

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

What's up with those scare quotes? Angular is open source (MIT), not "open source".

keda• 13 years ago

When is AngularJs 1.2 stable release coming out anyway?

eknkc2• 13 years ago

Oh got no please no... I use Angular freakin "JS" extensively.

At some point, I believe I will come to a position not to touch anything that has even a remote connection to Google. Just a couple of years ago I worshipped Google, now I feel they are always taking my toys away.

spuz2• 13 years ago

For those of us who don't have the benefit of your experience, could you explain why you think Google is doing something wrong here?

andyl• 13 years ago

I'm using AngularJS. But this Dart news is a dark cloud. I will never use Dart, or anything that locks me into Google's walled garden. I view Dart as a major negative.

Hello Ember.

spuz2• 13 years ago

"I will never use Dart"

That's quite a sure statement. Why don't you think Dart will ever be natively adopted by Firefox at some point in the future?

Helianthus21• 13 years ago

Because that's a pretty laughable idea. There's no reason for browsers to choose Dart over CoffeeScript or TypeScript, and Dart is so far behind CoffeeScript it's not even funny.

Google wants to do it, sure, but that doesn't mean they'll succeed, even if they try something as stubborn as running Dart alongside Javascript in Chrome.

There simply isn't a path to ubiquity for Dart, and if there were it's not the only language on it.

pjmlp8• 13 years ago

What do the other browser vendors gain by supporting Dart?

wamatt• 13 years ago

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 rather than cooperating fully.

The big issue I have with Dart, which you seem to consider inconsequential, is whether Google forks the web developer community, not just its own paid developers, with Dart, and thereby fragments web content.

A Dart to JS compiler will never be "decent" compared to having the Dart VM in the browser. Yet I guarantee you that Apple and Microsoft (and Opera and Mozilla, but the first two are enough) will never embed the Dart VM.

So "Works best in Chrome" and even "Works only in Chrome" are new norms promulgated intentionally by Google. We see more of this fragmentation every day. As a user of Chrome and Firefox (and Safari), I find it painful to experience, never mind the political bad taste.

Ok, counter-arguments. What's wrong with playing hardball to advance the web, you say? As my blog tries to explain, the standards process requires good social relations and philosophical balance among the participating competitors.

Google's approach with Dart is thus pretty much all wrong and doomed to leave Dart in excellent yet non-standardized and non-interoperable implementation status. Dart is GBScript to NaCl/Pepper's ActiveG.

Could Google, unlike Microsoft ten or so years ago, prevail? Only by becoming the new monopoly power on the web. We know how that story ends.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2982949

EDIT: updated to the long form quote, for additional context.

rdtsc15• 13 years ago

A developer who is seeing "dark clouds" and other doomsday scenarios at release of a nice open sourced package not using or participating in a community is an asset to that community.

dchest2• 13 years ago

Hello overreaction.

eknkc2• 13 years ago

Ember is a "no" for me beacuse of explicit getters and setters.

Angular's Object.observe like digest mechanism is superior.

lennel2• 13 years ago

observe is so slow however, not matter which way you do it.

YorickPeterse• 13 years ago

You do realize who made/maintains Angular right?

desireco42• 13 years ago

Seriously, if you like and use AngularJS and based on something tangential like this Dart announcement, you decide to switch to Ember, which honestly is not that similar.

Like someone said, you/we can always decide to fork project, but again... let people who care about Dart try to do it, I think this is legitimate prof of concept. I don't think it will catch up, if there is genuine work outside Google on Angular.

I am grateful for good work done on Angular project and look forward for new features. I will not use Dart that is for sure.

eliben• 13 years ago

What walled garden, could you elaborate?

Dart is an open-source project and compiles to JS. Not unlike CoffeeScript or TypeScript. The cool thing that makes me excited about dart2js is that Dart is a much better language than JS itself (not a high bar, but still) and that dart2js as of late is producing more efficient code than hand-coded JS because they leverage Dart's more ubiquitous typing as well as other tricks.

bigonlogn• 13 years ago

This is the nature of using any third party software or API. If you're not going to write it yourself, then you have to be willing to play by someone else's rules. Words I learned to live by years ago.

Coincidentally, this is how I feel about AngularJS. By using it, you're developing apps the way Google wants you (or it's own developers) to. It could be good, it could be bad. it depends on the app, but you still have to do it their way.

You don't want to be locked into Google's walled garden, but, by using Angular, you're already inside...

guiomie• 13 years ago

As if the javascript version was so good that it doesn't require anymore work.

btford3• 13 years ago

False dichotomy. Work on the the JavaScript version has actually increased. Google grew the team, not split it. https://github.com/angular/angular.js/pulse

jimrhoskins• 13 years ago

I'm so confused by the comments here. Did I miss a line where they say AngularJS is being discontinued for AngularDart?

dchest2• 13 years ago

It's normal; wait until you see something about Google Reader.

rdtsc15• 13 years ago

This is the sound of thousands of hipsters realizing they won't be using the latest and greatest toy anymore. There is a shinier newer toy coming around the corner.

That is the only explanation I can come up with. Scouring the comments filled with hate and vitriol I couldn't find much substance as to exactly why the are upset. There is no indication Google is going to sue them for patent infringement for using AngularJS, they are not closing the project. It is open source, if they love and think it is great, they are free to fork it and contribute to it.

Max_Horstmann3• 13 years ago

I like both Angular and Dart, so that's good news.

One thing I noticed though: transpiling a .dart file with just the import statement for AngularDart (import 'package:angular/angular.dart') generates a non-minified 5MB .js file with almost 150 kloc. Every code change will create a new version of it, invalidating previously cached versions. :/

floitsch3• 13 years ago

Are you sure you are using the latest version? Angular was an early user of mirrors (reflection) which (more or less) disabled the tree-shaking of dart2js. This was recently improved.

Tracking the size of AngularDart: https://github.com/jbdeboer/angular-dart-js-size

Max_Horstmann3• 13 years ago

Maybe I'm missing something, but yes, I think so. Dart version 0.8.10.3_r29803.

pubspec.yaml:

name: test1 dependencies: browser: any angular: git: https://github.com/angular/angular.dart.git

test1.dart:

import 'package:angular/angular.dart'; main() => ngBootstrap();

dart2js launch => builds test1.dart.js, about 5MB, 142,749 loc.

lennel2• 13 years ago

So are you using that the full tree shaking algo works with angular now?

spankalee12• 13 years ago

There's still a lot of work to be done on code size when using reflection, and teams at Google are definitely interested in incremental updates to cached apps, so that will be worked on too. It's still very early in Dart's lifetime.

mjibson• 13 years ago

I'm excited for this. I have a fair sized angularjs app that is getting unwieldy, and having a compiler that yells at me about type problems sounds great. Even if dart doesn't get supported by non-Chrome browsers, I think it could still provide lots of value to developers: it has the same useful type checking as typescript, with some other needed features. It is possible that the transpilation to JS will cause problems, but overall I think it'll be a better dev experience producing better software.

srin• 13 years ago

Yeah I started making a chrome app for my own use and it's starting to get to a point where if I don't work on it for a while, I spend a bit too much time making sure I'm not creating bugs interacting with old code

Also, Chrome apps seem to be a great use for this even if no other browsers embed a dart VM (if it gets to that). I'm just not seeing why this is so bad

WoodenChair4• 13 years ago

If you don't like Dart, don't use it. Nobody is taking away your AngularJS. Google has a right to promote whatever language it thinks will give it a competitive advantage. You have a right to be revolted by it.

However, the hyperbole surrounding anything that even remotely, several years down the line, may threaten the monopoly of JavaScript on the client side web is ridiculous. Language competition is good - it ultimately will make for a better JavaScript.

Personally, I think there are a lot of people deeply invested in Javascript who fear anything that even remotely, one day in the super future, may threaten their skill set. That's understandable - it's the same way MS developers scoffed at learning Objective-C when the iOS ecosystem blew up and the Windows monopoly didn't matter as much.

Let's inject some reality - Dart is no threat to JavaScript for the foreseeable future. AngularJS is not going anywhere. Dart can't be forced down your throat, because no consumer browser even supports it natively yet. You don't need to use it, you don't even need to think about it. Let the people that like it be.

Helianthus21• 13 years ago

Just because it can't be forced down our throat doesn't mean it's not uncomfortable that Google's trying.

WoodenChair4• 13 years ago

Like I said, "You have a right to be revolted by it." But, I think it would probably be a better use of your time to be uncomfortable over things like hunger and disease than a company trying to promote a new programming language to further its self interest - that's what companies do.

btian2• 13 years ago

When did Google try to force Dart down your throat? Just because Angular is being ported to Dart? Seriously? Are you saying that Dart developers don't deserve Angular?

rdtsc15• 13 years ago

Personally, I think there are a lot of people deeply invested in Javascript who fear anything that even remotely, one day in the super future, may threaten their skill set.

Pretty much, I think a large swathe of people who jumped on the Angular JS platform are quite fond of just that -- jumping on the latest technology. They've evangelized for it, knocked on peoples' doors Saturday mornings, wanted to tell them about the great new wonderful framework that will save the world. And now the fear is not that Angular JS will go way. It won't. It will be there sitting on Github accepting pull requests, forks will appear and so on. They fear that there will be something else, newer out there and they will be stuck with 2012 technology. They will be hipsters who are still drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon while all other cooler hipsters are drinking Tecate already.

cpprototypes2• 13 years ago

When I look at Dart vs JS (JavaScript), I see a lot of parallels to Java/C#. The Java language stagnated for a long time under Sun. The language was usable only through the heroic efforts of tool vendors (Eclipse, IntelliJ, etc.) Even with these tools, Java is just barely good enough.

C# is technically a superior language to Java. Combined with an excellent IDE (VS), the .NET platform is probably technically superior to the Java platform. However, .NET did not destroy Java. And it's because Java is superior to .NET in many non-technical areas (such as a better open source community). And other solutions appeared to help the Java platform with the language stagnation issue (Scala, Clojure, Groovy, etc.). Now Java itself is somewhat catching up (Java 8) and the JVM platform remains a powerful and thriving community.

The situation with Dart and JS seems to be similar. The JS language has stagnated for a long time. Google is trying to be like MS with C# and created Dart to fully replace JS. And Dart is probably technically superior to JS. But just like Java vs C#, I don't think technical superiority will be enough.

The JS platform is addressing the language issue with CoffeeScript, TypeScript, and others, just like Scala and Clojure appeared for the JVM. And JS itself is improving slowly (ECMAScript 6) just like Java 8. And the JS open source community is very very strong (all the web related libraries and frameworks and now additional strength from Node.JS) and it's unlikely Dart will have a comparable community. I think that Dart may achieve some success like .NET/C# did. However, I don't think it will destroy JS like Google hopes it will. The JS platform is just like the JVM platform. Has so many flaws, but is good enough.

LiweiZ• 13 years ago

If Google is able to get browsers provide the UX capability same as or even better than Androd/iOS does, things will be different. I'm a layman of web development. But I think this is something worth noticing. The current UX capability in browsers is definitely not a strong point compared with native apps. Google's strategy seems to take territories of internet through browsers. In the mid/long term, making the gap between web app and native app smaller or close to zero in different aspects(such as UX, product development) will probably be one of its high level focuses.

sek• 13 years ago

Not a good comparison.

Java and C# are both well designed server side languages. C# has the simple advantage of being younger and learn from Java in the real world.

JavaScript in the real world is not even close to Dart. JavaScript is currently trying to solve problems Java never had to begin with.

In almost every category Dart is technically superior. Shouldn't be a surprise, they took their time and learned from more than a decade of dealing with JavaScript. They are also not done yet, they are planning to inject binary code directly into memory.

Just look at Lars Bak's history, he is the right guy to create the Java/JavaScript successor for the web.

bovermyer• 13 years ago

I like Dart. It's fun to write. I don't understand all the vitriol directed towards it.

edtechdev2• 13 years ago

I don't either, although while I think dart is an improvement over javascript, it also is basically just like java. I'd prefer a runtime that multiple languages could easily compile to, but until then there are several languages that can compile to javascript, treating it like a runtime (including dart itself): https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee-script/wiki/List-of-lang...

cletus• 13 years ago

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 efforts. Honestly, getting 10,000 engineers to act in a coordinated fashion is probably like trying to herd 10,000 cats.

AngularJS started as a side project that became Google-sponsored and it grew organically. Being Google-sponsored simply means some team somewhere has dedicated some engineers to working on it. That's it.

Likewise a group of engineers separately started Dart due to dissatisfaction with JavaScript being the lingua franca of the Web. The idea was that Dart can be implemented as a VM within a browser and get faster performance that way. Likewise, it should compile to JavaScript for browsers that don't support Dart in the browser (which is all of them except Chrome). Also, Dart shares a lot of the philosophies of GWT in sharing code between client and server.

Now my personal view is that I honestly don't see the point of Dart. I mean no disrespect to the team or their efforts but I don't agree with the premise or the design philosophy of Dart.

Optional typing seems to me to combine the worst of both worlds. If typing is useful (as the static typers will argue) then be statically typed. If it's not be dynamically typed. Dart's type system is basically just the Closure JsDoc system used by the Closure compiler. That's it. To me, there's no real innovation there.

Dart is really just another Coffeescript and I don't see the point of Coffeescript either.

One of the benefits of development in JavaScript is you can simply refresh your browser and it just works. I'm a huge fan of this fast iteration cycle in development. It's the same reason I'm a fan of Python, Ruby and even PHP.

Additionally, as soon as you add a translation step from something to JavaScript, you introduce potential bugs in that translation (eg I've seen bugs with the Closure compiler incorrectly removed code it thought was dead and that was JS to JS let alone the issues with, say, GWT's Java to JS). Even if there aren't bugs, tracing issues back to the source becomes more difficult.

Rob Pike through Go seems to believe this too (not that I claim to speak for him) because he's repeatedly mentioned that the simple syntax of Go and fast compilation is a deliberate feature, a philosophy I agree with 100%. It's also one reason I detest C++: slow compilation kills productivity (IMHO).

So AngularDart is nothing more than another group of engineers (perhaps there's a crossover with the Dart folks) wants a modern Web framework for client-side Dart so they created one.

The idea that this is part of some grand strategy is quite frankly ludicrous.

Google puts their effort behind a lot of experimental projects. Some work out, many don't. Will Dart succeed? I don't presume to know. But while I don't agree with the premise/philosophy it makes me happy that the company I work for is still prepared to experiment with such efforts and devote resources to them.

If you work at Google you'll often see three teams working on roughly the same thing, typically without knowing about the existence of the others. They may consolidate or compete (if they have incompatible philosophies that the teams feel strongly about) or something in between.

This happens because so many efforts just start out as a single engineer or a small group of engineers just trying something out or they want to solve a problem they see (and in an organization this large it's rare you're the only one who sees a particular problem and wants to do something about it).

So, please, can we discuss this on its merits rather than the new norm of seeing vast conspiracies or simply seeing things as some collusion with the NSA. It's really tiresome.

EDIT: added a paragraph about the issues of bugs and translating something to javaScript.

polux• 13 years ago

Google engineer here too. I completely agree with the fast edit/refresh cycle being a huge plus but that's precisely what Dartium (the build of Chromium that includes the Dart VM and ships with the Dart editor) is for.

discreteevent3• 13 years ago

Yes, developer workflow is one of the key points I think anyone who has looked at the Dart documentation would get. Or, better yet, even try using the language for five minutes.

rdtsc15• 13 years ago

As a Dart learner, thank you. Dart IDE is great. It has some rough edges, it is new, but I like that the IDE is developed along the language and the VM. It make a difference.

Helianthus21• 13 years ago

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 causes the friction: resentment that a pretty flawed language is being pushed. Dart does take time away from other more worthwhile projects.

None of the cynicism is over wishing that Google would stop experimenting with technology, it's over Google's waste of time.

Edit: Actually, apparently there might be a formalized 'grand plan,' reading nateabele.

spankalee12• 13 years ago

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 CoffeeScript, this is really far from reality. CoffeeScript is just syntax changes, and that's not sufficient for fixing JavaScript major problems - which come form its semantics, not it's syntax.

Dart and CoffeeScript are actually quite far apart on the spectrum of compile-to-JS languages: Dart tries to keep a similar syntax and fix the semantics, CoffeeScript tries to keep the semantics and "fix" the syntax (I personally find CoffeeScript very hard to read). Claiming that Dart is another CoffeeScript, to me, shows a real lack of knowledge about one or both of the languages.

rdtsc15• 13 years ago

Google's overbearing intention is obvious.

Please.

That's what causes the friction: resentment that a pretty flawed language is being pushed.

"flawed language" you mean [] + [] doesn't equal '' ?

Oh look it throws a "TypeError: Object #<JSArray> has no method '$add'", yes please bring more such flawed languages around Google, I love them!

ahoge3• 13 years ago

It's being designed as a javascript replacement.

Yes, it is. But I'm not sure why you're viewing that as something negative.

It addresses the kind of problems everyone encounters when they try to write bigger applications in JavaScript.

GWT and the Closure Compiler also did this kind of thing. Dart does the same, but in a far more elegant manner. It's terser and the workflow is far more streamlined.

Having proper tooling is really great. Also, thanks to the type annotations you'll need fewer tests, you get better documentation, and it also acts as a safety net for refactoring/maintenance work.

It will enable more people (myself included) to write larger high-quality web applications.

nateabele4• 13 years ago

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.

milkshakes• 13 years ago

spankalee responded to you already[1], how much more clear can people be?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6678798

detst6• 13 years ago

What exactly are those instructions? You or your friend have a misunderstanding. This dual-implementation will benefit the project as a whole (whether you prefer JS or Dart). That's what this is about, not to make JS a second-class citizen because evil Google wants to shove Dart down your throat.

VeejayRampay• 13 years ago

Thanks to you guys for trying to get rid of the Javascript deadlock/choke hold and get the ball moving. It was about time too.

nailer3• 13 years ago

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 doesn't exist publicly.

Dark doesn't belong to the web developer community. No conspiracy theory needed, dart is built to suit googles purposes, which is fine. The only thing is expecting people to use it and think its a successor to JS, which, for all the flaws of JS, it is not.

Google know what a community developed successor to JS looks like. Optional strong typing in even MS typescript is more popular than dart. Get together with the community or dart will be he next GWT.

floitsch3• 13 years ago

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.

ceronman• 13 years ago

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.

This is simply not true! I've been following the language for a long time and they have made a lot of changes, they have listened to feedback. Just search 'BREAKING CHANGE' on the mailing lists. During the first year there were tons of changes to the language and libraries. Now they trying to stabilize the APIs

cpprototypes2• 13 years ago

If the ECMAScript committee would just take typing ideas from TypeScript, stamp ECMAScript 6.1 on it, and approve it as standard, JavaScript could become an amazing language.

oscargrouch• 13 years ago

Are you listening Brendan Eich?

Not only that, implement it right away in the JS engines..

Javascript must move faster, because even that people are being forced to like it(because they dont have anywhere to hide); everything has limits.. everybody knows that we cant go on with the javascript the way it is right know and pretends everything its just fine and its all roses and unicorns..

Im trying to create something new here that will need an embedded VM, and deciding between JS, Lua or Dart is just killing me.. if that was an option, and the next javascript was just something like typescript.. this would be a easy decision

camus23• 13 years ago

Typescript is basicaly EcmaScript4. but Microsoft and Yahoo said NO to it in 2007.

It did not happen BECAUSE of Microsoft (Adobe pushed FOR it, Mozilla got cold feet).

antihero2• 13 years ago

I think the issue is that conspiracy theories are a natural thing when there has been a significant damage in trust - when Google killed Reader, a much loved product, and other stuff such as closing random accounts with no recourse, they hurt the trust of their developer following. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, etc. The more Google does to act like a cold business as opposed to the nostalgic developer friendly company, they become feared and resented. This is an immeasurably difficult thing to fix.

ahoge3• 13 years ago

browsers that don't support Dart in the browser (which is all of them except Chrome)

All but Dartium. Even Chrome doesn't support it natively yet.

Dart's type system is basically just the Closure JsDoc system used by the Closure compiler.

Yes, it's basically something like that. The difference is that it's terser and far more convenient to use. Since it's baked into the language, it's standardized and properly supported by all tools.

Another difference is that you immediately benefit from putting those annotations at the boundaries. You get the checks and call-tips right off the bat.

Dart is really just another Coffeescript

No, Dart and TypeScript offer proper tooling. CS doesn't.

Dart also offers much nicer semantics.

One of the benefits of development in JavaScript is you can simply refresh your browser and it just works.

Same with Dart. You just use Dartium during development.

johnyzee• 13 years ago

Love GWT, and for the moment, unlike Dart, it uses a language that is viable for both server and client-side code. Until Dart catches up to Java (particularly for the server-side part), I'll be happily using GWT. Dart looks promising, though.

azio_m• 13 years ago

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction." ~ Albert Einstein

wnevets• 13 years ago

How is this anything but a good thing for AngularJS?

TheMagicHorsey• 13 years ago

Don't know much about Dart. Is there a way for Dart code to call/use Javascript libraries? Like could I use D3 in Dart?

_ak• 13 years ago

There's a library to call JavaScript code from Dart, both in the VM and when the Dart code is compiled to JS: https://www.dartlang.org/articles/js-dart-interop/

spankalee12• 13 years ago

Yep, we use d3.js on Dart projects internally.

Check out the dart:js library, which is pretty new, and the article that _ak linked (which needs some updating).

http://api.dartlang.org/docs/releases/latest/dart_js.html

camus23• 13 years ago

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.

nicklovescode• 13 years ago

If someone creates egghead.io for Dart, I will pay for it.

Angular Announces AngularDart

Related Stories