back to article Google throws new version of Dart at the desktop, will be hoping it sticks with app devs

Google software engineers have delivered Dart 2.6, an update to the open source programming language that provides the ability to create self-contained, native executables for the major desktop operating systems. That capability comes from an extension to the Dart compiler set called dart2native, which makes it possible to …

  1. pavel.petrman

    Hobbyists and workers

    There has never been a shortage of languages whose authors meant well and said languages were nice towards programmers and computers alike. A common property of these languages has always been a very certain not catching on. An interesting academic exercise and a thing for language theorists and assorted computer hobbyists. Whereas all the doers have always seemed to stick with the likes of c's, c++es and javascripts (fortran and cobol being actually nice in their times remain somewhat off this list). With javascript, the same, sadly, goes for all those vues and angulars. There is yet to come a first like of Qt into the web landscape (and when it does, I'm sure many a champagne will be popped).

    So thank you google for your efforts, they haven't gone unnoticed. They sure brightened the morning for one or three us labourers, before we dive into our undefined behaviours and tripple equality operators once again today and tomorrow and the day after that, only to retire every evening to our dvds and vhses, toasting with a driest gin to beta, laserdisc and dart.

    1. Tom 7

      Re: Hobbyists and workers

      I've said for a long time people write new languages because they fail to understand the old ones. Javascript was probably different in the sense that it needed to be IP free in the browser but then its main enemies got access to its development and maimed it when it got into its teens and prevented it (in mid 1990s IIRC) from being a really useful thing that makes people write stuff like this when it should never have been needed.

      I now have the joy of not being able to write things in JS that I could in JavaScript2* - it had proper classes and inheritance - and my Python libraries are compiled in C++ on installation except for some big scientific shit which is compiled in Fortran!

      *cant seem to find it now but it was offered as a FF script engine by Netscape (IIRC) in late 90s or so and in a weekend or so I managed to write a very usable browser desktop in it.

      1. pavel.petrman

        Re: Hobbyists and workers

        Any chance that your JavaScript2 based program used JPEG2000 as default image format? Oh my hopes, sweet hopes...

        1. Teiwaz

          Re: Hobbyists and workers

          Any chance that your JavaScript2 based program used JPEG2000 as default image format? Oh my hopes, sweet hopes...

          Long past time GIF got retired in favour of apng too.

        2. Tom 7

          Re: Hobbyists and workers

          It used whatever HTML allowed.

      2. Phil Endecott

        Re: Hobbyists and workers

        > proper classes and inheritance

        See the new class features in Ecmascript 6 aka 2015

        1. Tom 7

          Re: Hobbyists and workers

          Thanks for that Phil! That somehow slipped past my radar.

          Me and Flask are going to have some fun!

        2. Muira

          Re: Hobbyists and workers

          Worth bearing in mind that the ECMAScript 2015 class syntax does not actually introduce a traditional object-oriented inheritance model to JavaScript. It simply allows you to write code using more traditional OO syntax while under the covers it remains the existing prototype-based inheritance. It doesn't provide the guarantees that every Java developer has become used to.

  2. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    Always bet on Javascript

    Oh, but I always do. I always bet that there will be some JS somewhere that is just waiting to pounce on my machine and screw it up.

    That is why I use NoScript.

    1. pavel.petrman

      Re: Always bet on Javascript

      May I recommend uMatrix? I started with NoScript long ago and graduated to uMatrix not long after that - it allows you to set site specific rules, so that you don't have to allow some Google shenanigans globally in case one critical webpage refuses to work without it. You can even save your preset rules permanently and export your preferences to a backup file. All in all it makes for much more pleasant browsing while being much more potent at disabling unwanted content (cookies, frames, tracking images etc. as well).

      1. Efer Brick

        Re: Always bet on Javascript

        You may, but what we really need is a blocker that fools the main site into think that the advert has actually loaded, stopping those "remove your ad-blocker" type messages >-)

        1. jelabarre59

          Re: Always bet on Javascript

          You may, but what we really need is a blocker that fools the main site into think that the advert has actually loaded, stopping those "remove your ad-blocker" type messages >-)

          Maybe something that re-directs the downloading of those particular ads to the ad-server's own cache directory rather than *your* machine. Sure, *something* downloads the ad, so the server should think it's happy.

  3. Fenton

    What about a language for mere mortals

    I'm still waiting for a cross platform environment for simpletons like me.

    The closest I've found has been visual basic for the desktop and appmaker.

    But I often feel developers develop languages for full time developers, Rather than somebody who just wants to build a quick and dirty tool as they have exhausted what they can do in a spreadsheet.

    1. Alan Bourke

      Re: What about a language for mere mortals

      Xojo, LiveCode ...

  4. Arthur Kater :-D ☺

    Dart compiles into JavaScript, similar to what TypeScript does.

    Why doesn't Dart compile into WebAssembly ?

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