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Open source is not a specification. Imagine if JavaScript was specified as "what SpiderMonkey does". Then there's the issue that Google didn't make many friends

by Erunno 15y ago

Open source is not a specification. Imagine if JavaScript was specified as "what SpiderMonkey does". Then there's the issue that Google didn't make many friends by letting the other browser vendors in the dark until they had a more or less finished product. As a consequence the language has some rather questionable design decisions like the much discussed covariant array issue as well as purely syntactic ones. Additionally I'm rather sure that some browser vendors (especially Mozilla and Microsoft) are not so thrilled having to import and integrate a code base into their own products which is solely controlled by Google.

dchest 15y ago
Dart will be submitted for standardization once they have specs finished. JavaScript was standardized two years after its appearance in the shipping browser https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECMAScript https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECMAScript
- leptons 15y ago
  And Microsoft will likely never support it, so until IE dies completely (still around 50% market share total), this is a pointless exercise, and is likely to cause more confusion and wasted time than it will help web developers. Wave died, Google Buzz died, Google+ is stillborn, not everything google does is magic. Until IE supports Dart natively, I won't be wasting any of my time with it. I don't care that Dart compiles to javascript, it's not a substitute for javascript that runs inside the browser.
cwp 15y ago
First, Dart has a specification that's independent of Google's implementation(s). There are several implementations, which track the spec to varying degrees. See http://www.dartlang.org/docs/spec/index.html http://www.dartlang.org/docs/spec/index.html Second, Dart is far from finished. It was unveiled early, precisely so interested parties could try it out and provide feedback while the spec was still evolving. Third, development is happening in full view, with a public source code repository, public mailing lists, public bug tracking and public code review. AFAIK all the committers are still at Google, but it's a far more open process than the one that created Javascript, and not even comparable to VBScript. Finally, Javascript is defined as "what SpiderMonkey does." Ok, it's fairly well documented, and the source is available for inspection. But Javascript is a proprietary language owned by Mozilla. ECMAScript is the open standard, and there are significant differences between that and the Javascript implementation that's included in Firefox. Why isn't anyone jumping up and down about how Mozilla is breaking the web by shipping a non-standard proprietary language controlled by one company? I'm not a Google apologist; they've definitely done some evil things lately. But Dart isn't one of them. AFAICT, they've tried to strike a careful balance between including the web community in the design and implementation of Dart, while still holding to their vision of what web programming could be, and advancing towards it. I think they've done a pretty good job and I don't see what they could have done better. Herding cats is hard. [edit - fixed punctuation]

by Erunno 15y ago

dchest 15y ago

Dart will be submitted for standardization once they have specs finished. JavaScript was standardized two years after its appearance in the shipping browser https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECMAScript https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECMAScript

leptons 15y ago
And Microsoft will likely never support it, so until IE dies completely (still around 50% market share total), this is a pointless exercise, and is likely to cause more confusion and wasted time than it will help web developers. Wave died, Google Buzz died, Google+ is stillborn, not everything google does is magic. Until IE supports Dart natively, I won't be wasting any of my time with it. I don't care that Dart compiles to javascript, it's not a substitute for javascript that runs inside the browser.

cwp 15y ago

First, Dart has a specification that's independent of Google's implementation(s). There are several implementations, which track the spec to varying degrees. See http://www.dartlang.org/docs/spec/index.html http://www.dartlang.org/docs/spec/index.html Second, Dart is far from finished. It was unveiled early, precisely so interested parties could try it out and provide feedback while the spec was still evolving. Third, development is happening in full view, with a public source code repository, public mailing lists, public bug tracking and public code review. AFAIK all the committers are still at Google, but it's a far more open process than the one that created Javascript, and not even comparable to VBScript. Finally, Javascript is defined as "what SpiderMonkey does." Ok, it's fairly well documented, and the source is available for inspection. But Javascript is a proprietary language owned by Mozilla. ECMAScript is the open standard, and there are significant differences between that and the Javascript implementation that's included in Firefox. Why isn't anyone jumping up and down about how Mozilla is breaking the web by shipping a non-standard proprietary language controlled by one company? I'm not a Google apologist; they've definitely done some evil things lately. But Dart isn't one of them. AFAICT, they've tried to strike a careful balance between including the web community in the design and implementation of Dart, while still holding to their vision of what web programming could be, and advancing towards it. I think they've done a pretty good job and I don't see what they could have done better. Herding cats is hard. [edit - fixed punctuation]