This is a
great news for the Web: no more effort behind Dart VM, only to the language itself as transpiled to JavaScript.
This puts Dart as just another language like CoffeeScript, TypeScript, or any other that will desugar to JS.
Why this is good for the Web
The Web is far-far-far-far-away from being a perfect rock-solid platform, and simply the idea that every browser vendor should have put effort to create even more fragmentation on the Web due multiple integrated VMs has been worried me since the very first Dart announcement: thanks gosh it didn't make it!
On the other hand, having Dart only as transpiled langauge means there will be more effort in transpiled languages tools, including better integration and better debugging possibilities for Web developers ... and This Is Cool!
Update
While it's confirmed that Dart won't bother the Web with its VM anymore, the language and its VM will still work on the server and other places.
Toward ES.next Anyway
It wasn't just me noticing that in the last years Dart never impressed or show better muscles, and if it has to desugar to JS then I might be the only one here but how about we just
learn JavaScript instead? OK, somebody probably liked Dart, as somebody likes TypeScript, CoffeeScript and others ... and this is a free world so do what you think is best for your projects, but also ...
@AlwaysBetOnJS!
Yeah, I"m not sure why so many people got the announcement a little askew.
ReplyDeleteThe only thing that has been discontinued is the attempts to get Dart into the public Chrome as a VM.
Dart will still run in the development "Dartium" browser as a VM, for debugging (and it works quite well!).
Dart will also run server-side as a VM. Think of node.js, but a smarter language.
But by concentrating on the dart-to-javascript usage path for client-side applications, Dart will be able to run equally well on all browsers, not just Chrome (minus the usual IE complaints). This is a good thing.