Aral Balkan: Historical Archive — Google Dart, or ‘how we lost the ECMAScript 4 battle so we decided to create our own language instead’.

Google Dart, or ‘how we lost the ECMAScript 4 battle so we decided to create our own language instead’.

So what do you do if you lose a public battle to change the face of JavaScript?

If you're Google, you decide to go it alone, implement what you want to anyway, and then tell the world that it is going to replace JavaScript.

What's the problem with Dart? Apart from the fact that it looks like a Java developer's wet dream and will possibly mean the existence of two client-side programming languages for the web, thereby confusing the heck out of anyone just coming into web programming, it's a solution for problems that mostly Google has. How many folks out there are creating Gmail or Google Docs? And what are the costs of the additional complexity of a language like Dart for people who aren't creating Gmail and Google Docs (in other words, the majority of the web?) And, instead of throwing your toys, flashing the middle finger at the rest of the web community, and going it alone, maybe the thing to do–if you believe in an open and standards-based web–is to play nice with the other kids.

Heck, can you imagine what the fallout would be if Microsoft declared, ‘you know what, we've decided that C# should be the language of the web. Today we're declaring that it's going to replace JavaScript and that every browser should implement it. We're going to start with IE10.’

Remember a time when you thought Google was good? Because it's beginning to look like the playground bully to me. Personally, I hope that no one apart from Google gives Dart–that convoluted and unnecessary ECMAScript 4++ of a language–any notice whatsoever. And here's hoping Google realize their folly before they bloat my favorite browser (Chrome) with that shite.

Comments

For the record, I don’t hate the idea of Dart & I’m not ruling out the possibility it could be useful (I wasn’t a fan of Conditional Comments initially either), I’m just concerned about the potential this has to foster another browser war that the web suffers for. @Martin: JavaScript is definitely a maleable language. Some folks write it like Ruby, others write it like Python or PHP, still others write in a more traditional C style. That’s part of the beauty of the language.
by Aaron Gustafson on 2011-10-12 01:18:39
JavaScript is the worst. I welcome anything that can disrupt the current web programming model.
by sam on 2011-10-14 01:22:49
I could not have put it better myself.
by Aaron Gustafson on 2011-10-11 19:08:07
I'm not sure I fully understand your beef. Dart - it's just an option you can choose. If you're not building an application that has the complexity of Gmail, then don't touch it. Just stick with JavaScript. It also compiles to JS if you'd prefer to just code in Dart but ship JS. You should give them some credit for pushing ahead with something they believe in. Let them try, and let the world take a view. If it's good, then it'll stick around, if it's not then it won't. I think suggesting there's some bullying going on is a bit much. And I'm not sure that your suggestion that it's bad just because Java developer might like it helps lend any weigh to your overall argument.
by Simon on 2011-10-11 19:15:19
@Simon: For me it’s more a concern that Google will effectively bifurcate the web dev community and send us back down the path we were on during the browser wars when Netscape pretty much forced Microsoft to reverse-engineer JavaScript and we ended up with two differing DOM implementations. We’re only just moving past that whole mess and Google could cause it to happen again knowing what the cost to the web might be. I also worry about companies that buy into Dart (or are sold on it) only to have it disappear or only gain traction in Chrome. I hate to see people waste money on developing for something that may not have staying power. (Think of the poor Silverlight developers or folks who are now retooling their WebDBs for recent examples of this.) Obviously caveat emptor, but still. Finally, from what I understand, the Dart compilation to JavaScript isn’t 100% cross-browser. I believe Opera is currently unsupported. PS - Irony: Hixie (a Google employee) is the editor of the HTML5 spec that ditched the type attribute on script tags because JavaScript is the only front-end scripting language in use on the web.
by Aaron Gustafson on 2011-10-11 19:31:46
I don't quite get all the hate people have over Dart. I mean I can understand how those who love Javascript just the way it is may not be too keen, but for those who don't like everything JS, Dart offers some interesting changes. To counter some of your points: • I doubt requiring two client side languages will have any real impact. You already need to know 3 different languages just to write basic web code. And that's before you get to the server side when you have to choose between Ruby, Python, PHP, Perl, C, C#, Java etc and also deal with the likes of SQL. The damage is already done, so one more option won't make a big difference. • Dart also seems to be implemented in terms of JS. There are already many languages out there for client side coding that are the same, such as CoffeeScript, Objective-J and to some degree jQuery given how different it can look to straight JS. The existence of these languages didn't really cause any problems and were in fact praised as innovation • As you state Dart is a solution for the problem of writing web apps, but most people aren't writing web apps so what is the benefit of it to them? The answer is probably none. But Objective-C has no benefit to someone who's wanting to display a static web page, but it's still a useful language. Because a language exists doesn't mean it has to be used. • This isn't the first time Google has pushed ahead with something non-standard, but it's not like Apple, Mozilla or Microsoft have either. You know as well as I that the web is lagging behind other development platforms, and open standards play a large roll in that. Being innovative and providing extensions is the only way to reasonably speed up standards. Indeed this is how standards such as OpenGL work and to a large degree how web standards work already (consider all the -webkit and -moz CSS attributes). It's often easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission. Now if Google wants to completely replace Javascript and get rid of it in Chrome and on Android then yes, your stance is valid and Google is in the wrong. If they're only wanting to solve a problem they have, caused by shortcomings in Javascript, and then to share that solution with the community, then I don't see it being a major problem myself. Rather, it is showing how they are trying to innovate on a relatively non-innovative dev platform
by Martin Pilkington on 2011-10-11 19:32:32
I'm not too sure how I feel about this. I can see why Google wants it to happen but if other browser vendors adopted it they would undoubtedly be on a back foot to Chrome, at least in the beginning. JavaScript has come a long way and I think it will continue to improve, but obviously not quickly enough for Google.
by Robert Uridge on 2011-10-11 19:33:04
Sure not everyone builds Gmail or Google Docs right now but richer and more complex internet applications are being developed under HTML5/JavaScript umbrella every day and JavaScript is simply not designed for this kind of serious development. Any developer who spends a little time to build a somewhat complex application in JavaScript realizes its shortcomings right away. So what do you do with these shortcomings? You either live with them (that's what we've been doing for so long), you either try to get consensus and come up with something better (that hasn't happened) or you try to implement something better on your own and hope others follow, as Google did. It's a big bet for Google but I applaud them for trying to push the web forward just like Apple pushed mobile space forward by going on their own way. Besides, Google is being much nicer than Apple by baking in enough flexibility in Dart to appeal to everyone (eg. those who cannot handle strong types can still confuse themselves and everyone else with just using 'vars').
by Mete Atamel on 2011-10-11 20:43:49
Dart code compiles to Javascript. I agree that it's a poor replacement for Javascript, but there's no indication that Javascript will not be supported, this is just a completely optional alternative that plays well with existing technology.
by Max on 2011-10-11 21:09:10
I usually agree w/ you but I couldn't disagree more. If we took this approach, nothing new would be created: Android, iOS, Rails, ASP.NET [eww...all Classic? phew], etc. I get your point on them saying it will replace Javascript but having multiple browser options is absolutely promising and will confuse no one anymore than multiple backend languages or multiple ways to build a mobile app. Choice is good. Adobe somewhat took the same approach. Instead of letting the "board" stilfe ActionScript 3 they broke from the spec [slightly] and innovated. Google is doing the same and I welcome it, even if I never use it. Now...their incarnation is an ECMA one [it seems] so I like that but yeah...it is verrrrry Java'esque, which turns me off unless [as you say] I plan to write a massive "Ajax" web app.
by John C. Bland II on 2011-10-12 03:19:54
I object to the inference that if Java developers like something, it must be suspect. Admittedly, Java developers do like Java, so their judgment may be suspect. But politics aside, Dart actually looks like a progressive step in the right direction in terms of language design. Perhaps I'm just an idealist, but if I had the chance to design or choose the language that would end up in the role JavaScript now has, I probably wouldn't have chosen JavaScript. Perhaps writing Java for work has turned me into some kind of Oracle zombie...
by Tom Morris on 2011-10-12 06:09:40
@John C. Bland II: Speaking only for myself here, I think the issue isn’t the possibility of a new language. I’m all for new stuff. The difference, however, between Dart and, say, Rails or even Node, is that only the server being used to deploy the app/site needs to support those languages. Add language support to that server (or cluster of servers) and you’re golden. If we had to ensure Rails or Node was supported on everyone’s machine in order for you to be able to use them, no new language would take off or we would see new language support relegated to particular browsers or OSes that chose (or felt the market pressure) to implement them. That’s the possibility that Dart opens up. If they fix the complier to work reliably for everyone, I’ll have fewer issues with it. You should be able to code in what ever manner you like using whatever libraries you want—LESS, SASS, jQuery, Prototype, Sproutcore—as long as the work you are producing will work reliably for users. My concern is for the end-user and his or her access to content.
by Aaron Gustafson on 2011-10-13 16:34:04
> will possibly mean the existence of two client-side programming languages for the web, thereby confusing the heck out of anyone just coming into web programming Um, nope. We need polyglot clients. JavaScript's stranglehold on in-browser interpreted languages is bad for programmers. The SCRIPT tag has a language attribute; let's start using it. > How many folks out there are creating Gmail or Google Docs? Most of us are, these days. Heard of backbone.js? All backbone apps are basically Gmail-size. The web is moving to the thiick-client, thin-server model, for better or worse, and it'd be best if broswers supported a multitude of languages, not just one or two. Why shouldn't I use Scheme or LUA to code my browser game? Why shouldn't I use Ruby to code my client-side webapp? Why shouldn't my "learn to program" app teach Logo? Why can't we have scratch.mit.edu or kidsruby.com programs running in browsers? Why does rubymonk.com need a "send code to the server" hack? And why does testfirst.org use git clone instead of running inline? Since JS is the only game in town, browser engineering effort is focused on optimizing JS interpreters. With a tiny little shift, all that effort could be turned to a generic VM (like LLVM or even JVM) which compiles any number of languages into a common bytecode and then runs blazingly fast and efficiently. An ecosystem of tools and standards could arise around debugging and optimizing this VM. [By the way, please tone done your comment spam filter. I'm not spamming. I'm linking. Just tell it to use rel=nofollow and chill out.] [And please conform to web standards and put comments below the post, not in a sidebar.]
by Alex Chaffee on 2011-11-01 14:36:17
Dear Aral, your post was the drop that led me to write In defense of Dart. About your points, no one's replacing JavaScript. It's not like it's VP8 vs H.264 again. :-) And no, it won't be two languages, there are already many, many more. Yes, the language is not revolutionizing, and no, it doesn't look super-pretty, and yes, it probably fits some better than others. For me, I'm looking forward to seeing how many people will adopt it and use the actor model in their web applications. Cheers Nik
by Niklas Saers on 2011-10-18 19:36:57
I would agree with you with everything you said here. But regarding to the over-bloated shite. jQuery is far more overbloated not in size but speed. http://jsperf.com/native-js-vs-jquery-selector-testing/2 And showing us how desperately we need a better solution. jQuery in on its hype because it's easier and faster to do something with it. And nobody is screaming about it.!
by devu on 2011-12-09 13:24:28
I feel trapped with javascript because compared to all the language we use on the server side, javascript seems like a bad joke. I was apparently created in 10 days to be "Java’s dumb kid brother or boy-hostage sidekick" (according to Brendan Eich, js creator). But because of politics and previous vendor wars, Javascript has somehow managed to survive and become the lingua franca of the client side world. I think thats a shame because we deserve better. I praise google for moving the ball forward. Not sure Dart will succeed but its a step in the right direction. As long as google develops this language in the open source model they have my support.
by numan on 2012-02-12 17:52:56