Tiffany B. Brown

a mish-mosh of stuff

Recommended: “Dart; or Why JavaScript has already won”

Peter-Paul Koch writes:

Google wants to create a new language for the web. That idea will have to be accepted by all other browser vendors. Nowadays that doesn’t just mean Microsoft, Mozilla, Apple, and Opera, but also Nokia, Samsung, RIM, and a host of minor ones. Why would they do as Google tells them?

That’s his reaction to Google’s DART project. Also check out 2ality’s post which gives an overview of DART.

I pretty much ageree with PPK here. I am sure DART is awesome. I know a lot of smart folks worked on it. But I’m not convinced the web needs another front-end language, particularly one that is pushed by a single company. Even Adobe’s cross-platform, ECMAScript 4-compliant ActionScript is rapidly losing ground to the open web.

  • Anonymous

    I agree, JavaScript is universal and widely established. We should make it better. This is a great example of when not to re-invent the wheel.

  • http://rauschma.de/ Axel Rauschmayer

    It seems to me that Google has changed their original stance: Dart currently seems positioned as a Java replacement, not a JavaScript replacement. As such, it would make much more sense and could be used on Android, too. But Google is still very vague about what they want Dart to be, which I find strange.

  • Anonymous

    True, but as I understand it, Dart can also be compiled into JavaScript. So it seems like a bridge for Java developers who do not ‘get’ JavaScript and do not want to learn it.

  • http://rauschma.de/ Axel Rauschmayer

    Agreed. It’s a shame to see Google Traceur so severely understaffed at the same time.