Never rely on Google for anything - always have alternatives. In the case of Dart, the alternative is that it is open source, which means if (read: when) Google drops Dart, other developers can continue to support it.<p>However, Dart is a 'full stack' solution. This means that any developer taking over Dart would have to support the IDE, the VM, the javascript transcoder, the language, integration with new browser features, cross browser compatibility, etc. This is practically impossible for hobbyists to do properly.<p>Why would Google drop Dart? Google is almost guaranteed to drop any project that does not have high traction and/or high income within a few years of release. Dart has neither income nor traction. If Google does not drop it, I will be very surprised and impressed.<p>I highly recommend avoiding Dart, but obviously the choice is yours. You've been warned.<p>EDIT: Just to add, Google can artificially increase traction of Dart by putting the Dart runtime inside Chrome and using that as a weapon to increase Chrome adoption, similar to Microsoft's ActiveX strategy. If Google does this it would be a pretty evil thing to do and go against the spirit of the web.<p>If your ethics are a bit lacking, you may want to try betting on this effect which would create a demand for Dart dev houses in the future, and could make you some cash.
> How serious is Google about Dart?<p>It depends. I spent a lot of time looking at Dart in the first part of this year. My impression is that the team developing Dart is very serious and enthusiastic about it. Dart makes web development fun again. It's easy to try things and throw them away if you get a better idea in the process. Building large apps is easy. The success of Dart doesn't only depend on success in the browser, because a lot of effort is being put into Dart on the server, where it hopes to compete with Nodejs and replace Java for some uses. Another motivation for Dart is that it is not influenced in any way by Oracle, who has sued Google over Java. Dart may shine on mobile devices where old browsers are not an issue, that remains to be seen.<p>Who is not enthusiastic about Dart at Google? I would say the Chrome team and the Closure team, based on a lot of reading and watching videos, are not enthusiastic. This is just my impression. I have no inside information. As far as I know, Dart is not being used internally.<p>The Chrome Frame issue caused me to switch to TypeScript, which I also really like. It's not as much fun as Dart, but it certainly makes JavaScript a lot more verifiably correct, with type annotations making code refactoring and type checking possible. TypeScript is an ok alternative to Dart. They feel similar, they each have their uses.<p>I wouldn't bet the company on Dart, but I would on TypeScript, which could go away and you'd still have perfectly readable and sensible JavaScript files to work with. As Anders Hejlsberg (designer of C# and TypeScript) says, "we don't obfuscate your code."<p>It's easy enough to learn Dart. There are places even now where it makes sense to use Dart. If JavaScript is an old internal combustion engine car, then TypeScript is one with automatic transmission and power steering, while Dart is a new electric car. I'll drive all three as long as they get me where I'm going.
Developers. Developers. Developers...<p>I'd love to know if there's an internal debate inside Google and if they are aware of how much recent decisions have damaged their reputation amongst a critical demographic.<p>I could not understand the decision to drop Chrome Frame. It seemed like a good strategic product but even more so - a lot of people had staked their reputation on a technology choice because of it's existence. These people were the thin end of a wedge inside enterprise cultures that were historically dominated by Microsoft evangelists. Google has now pissed off these people and made them look bad.
Greetings, I'm someone who is using Dart in production I can tell you that is promising and the community is growing.<p>The only problem I see is that Dart developers are focusing to much in the newer stuff w/o ironing the basics first, for example, the DateTime datatype can't parse this: "2013-08-03 12:00" but can parse this: "20130742", and to me is more important to work in those basics than all the fancy Canvas stuff or polymer.<p>We don't know the level of compromise Google has with Dart, I'm taking the risk cause I think is worth it.
I am puzzled by low-quality, hyperbolic, panicky articles like this. And I'm even more surprised by the reaction they cause on HN.<p><a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2013/06/retiring-chrome-frame.html" rel="nofollow">http://blog.chromium.org/2013/06/retiring-chrome-frame.html</a> seems like a pretty good reasoning w.r.t stopping updating Chrome Frame and lists alternatives. What's all this noise about? And what the hell does this have to do with Dart?
<i>I hope Google will provide some iron clad guarantees that their Dart project will be around for the next 5 years</i><p>5 years is a lifetime in web technology. 5 years ago nobody was using coffeescript, angular, ember, or any of that. They didn't exist, or if they did they were crude ancestors of what they are today.<p>I just don't think you can have this expectation of any guarantees like that in web development. Things move too fast. If you want that kind of guarantee, use open source stuff and acknowledge that you'll have to support it yourself when the rest of the world moves on.
Before Google Reader was cancelled I don't remember people worrying this much online about each new Google service and its longevity.<p>Seems like a non-issue to me. When we run out of real criticism against Google we just make some up because they're big and.. you know.. playa hatin'. ;)<p>Try to remember that it's first and foremost a search engine with ad-revenue. Anything else is a product of a liberal work environment and driven employees.
This article isn't about Dart, it's about IE6 and ChromeFrame. Microsoft itself is discontinuing support for IE6 next April. Period. It's dead.<p>You're blaming Google for not supporting a dead platform that not even Microsoft is going to support any longer.<p>It's time to upgrade your internal systems. Don't blame Google for not wasting resources on a shitty broken browser that causes developers to waste time supporting.<p>IE6 needs to die, die, die.
FWIW, Haxe is a solid alternative if you're looking into alt-js or cross platform (mobile) development:
<a href="http://haxe.org/" rel="nofollow">http://haxe.org/</a><p>It doesn't have the money of Google, but it has been around for 8 years, and is backed by its own non-profit foundation. It just recently hit version 3.0:
<a href="http://haxe.org/manual/haxe3/features" rel="nofollow">http://haxe.org/manual/haxe3/features</a><p>It continues to make steps forward with new cross-platform development frameworks like openfl.
<a href="http://www.openfl.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.openfl.org/</a>
><i>During the meeting one person said that about 15% of our users are still working with older browsers and we don’t want to lose them if Dart-generated JavaScript won’t work in Internet Explorer 7 or 8. I immediately answered that this wouldn’t be an issue, because several years ago Google created a smart way to automatically download Chrome’s JavaScript VM if the application runs inside IE. The name of this smart solution is Google Frame.</i><p>Err, Google Frame is not a "solution" for Dart not running on older IE browsers and it doesn't just download "Chrome's Javascript VM". It's (was) a way to install a different web engine for IE altogether, based on Chrome.<p>Second, it's not "automatically downloading" (which might give the impression that it's transparent to the user) -- you have to install it.
I was playing with Dart and found it really nice for both server and client side development. However, I ended up setting Dart aside (as I did for ClojureScript) and worked on my JavaScript skills.
Google didn't have a choice about Chrome Frame. The new Internet Explorer 10 doesn't support plugins that are as invasive as Chrome Frame. See <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ie/hh968248%28v=vs.85%29.aspx" rel="nofollow">http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ie/hh968248%28v=vs.8...</a><p>Chrome Frame on older Internet Explorer versions shouldn't really need to be updated that much, since those browsers aren't changing that much. Also, I find it really hard to believe that the kind of IT department that decrees that everyone has to use IE6 (or whatever) would ever allow such an invasive third-party plugin as Chrome Frame in the first place.<p>The limited browser compatibility of dart.js is a real issue and probably is a dealbreaker for some enterprise situations. But there's no need to bring Google Reader into this-- it has literally nothing to do with it.<p>The other thing which everyone seems to be missing here is that even if Google does "become bored with Dart," there will still be an open source community to support it. Coffeescript has been around forever without any sugar daddy. A big part of the reason for using open source technologies is to avoid vendor lock-in and other similar questions about the future.
Dart is part of Google's strategy to replace open-standards with its own proprietary walled-garden. Let's hope it doesn't work. Stay away from Dart.