When I had to deal with Windows 10 recently I got the impression MS has given up on Windows completely. The last notable improvements were introduced in Win XP. Most stuff that came later was just changing the look&view of a few settings windows with the only effect that all consistency was lost and Win looks more like a mess than a Linux desktop where some apps were built for X, Kde, Gnome, ...
It was also funny that SQL Management Studio crashed at the same use cases as it did 10-15 years ago.
It would be interesting if there were any developers working on anything but cloud at MS the past 10 years.
The last time there was a real UI and UX consistency was with Windows 2000 (or ME, if you want to stay on the consumer side). With Windows XP Microsoft introduced themeable controls but instead of making them available to all applications, they used an opt-in mechanism (based on special EXE resources or manifest files) so even nowadays unless you use that mechanism you get the Win2K era of controls.
Even then, with Windows 7 most things were consistent and if you really cared about consistency even with non-themed apps you could always switch to Windows Classic theme (which i always did, not so much because of consistency but also because i just like that theme :-P).
Since Windows 8 with the introduction of Metro/UWP/WinUI/WinWhateverNext consistency was thrown out of the Window, without even trying to pretend otherwise (it isn't a coincidence that the UI guidelines for desktop applications in Microsoft's site still use the Win7 theme).
Quite a few really good things came after XP. The new display[0] and sound[1] driver models, the new network[2] stack.
[0] Compositing, no longer need to reboot to install new video drivers
[1] Centralized per-application volume control
[2] VLAN tagging and bridging without third party products
Sadly, the thing with the new settings panels and mobile-ified look & feel is true. But that was all post-7.
> It would be interesting if there were any developers working on anything but cloud at MS the past 10 years.
There are, unfortunately, and they're terrible and keep pushing broken Windows updates and new features nobody asked for.
> "last notable improvements were introduced in Win XP"
I am not here to advocate that Windows is great, but to write something like this is just daft.
Visual consistency is not the main challenge of an OS, Windows is not MacOS in terms of visual polish and never will be.
The list of changes since those days is enormous. Just as an example - in XP any software could outright delete Windows folder or boot file and leave your computer uncountable. Modern UWP applications live in a sandboxed container with tight permissions and uninstall leaving no trace.
https://www.dartlang.org/community most discussions are on Slack. It's a bit unfortunate because one needs to register but it seems to be the platform most Dartisans are comfortable with.
Dart doesn't suck. Dart is different and developing in a way that meets both language needs is a pain in many situations.
If you say Dart sucks you also have to admit that TS sucks. They just suck at different things. There are no upsides without downsides. It's just about what upsides and downsides you are more comfortable to live with.
I didn't say Dart sucks - I said having to write the code a certain way when contributing due to Dart support, which is near non-existent outside Google, sucks.
In addition, it has complicated a lot of stuff for a long time due to build setups, bugs related to toolchains around Dart and Angular 2's repository, lengthier CI runtimes, and more. It was a huge net negative for those looking to contribute, even for simple changes.
> I said having to write the code a certain way when contributing due to Dart support
It sucks in both directions. If you're trying to fix things for Dart users, it's also a real hassle to have to figure out how to back-translate that into some kind of TypeScript that will then be compiled back into the Dart code you have in mind.
Having a single source of truth that you translate to JS/TS and Dart makes a lot of sense when the value you get from sharing outweighs the cost of dealing with the pipeline. My impression is that that cost/benefit hasn't worked out well for Angular. I think being split will enable both sides to move faster, even if it means manually migrating some fixes between the two languages.
I don't think OP was saying that dart sucks. He was saying it was a pain to have to write his ts code in a certain way to accomodate the Dart side of things. By splitting the repo he doesn't have to worry about that anymore, just like Dart developers won't have to worry about the ts/js side.
OP didn't quite say that Dart sucks though, did he? He said that coding in TS having to also cater to Darts needs/conventions sucks (which might be true or not, no idea really).
Dart has more polyfill stuff built-in. This is IMHO a big advantage when I see all the related StackOverflow Angular2 TS questions. A downside is that it is sometimes a bit more cumbersome to work around if something is not fully polyfilled by Dart and you have to work around "manually".
Dart is awesome. Just because currently the community is still small doesn't mean much.
Google is working on so much great stuff that Dart becomes more compelling every month. They are lying low since awhile with public announcements, but if you follow the commits there is so much work being done.
In a few months it will become hard to ignore Dart.
The combined development (TS+Dart) was slowing Angular development down and contribution was painful because one needed knowledge of both languages.
There are notable downsides for the split development but I fully understand the decision. Implementing everything in a way that it can be translated into the other language was a real pain and limited both versions to a common denominator which prevented both versions to benefit from the advantages of their respective language.
> Dart is awesome. Just because currently the community is still small doesn't mean much.
Well, it does mean something. Go is evidence that languages can gain momentum very fast so the fact that Dart still hasn't should be a bit of a concern (and probably partially caused by Typescript's popularity).
I'm working on a project in Dart. It just works, and it feels simple, and the type system means I can think more cleanly about my code. I like it, and this news is great!
A Dart-like language designed with WASM as target will make sense now but I think Dart(as it is now)is already doomed to die. The performance promissed is just not there.
Javascript compiled from Dart is as fast as normal Js, in some cases faster. And in the server it outperforms Node according to the Techempower benchmarks. https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/
In some cases is slower. Last time I've checked large apps were freezing on safari. The point is that it's not signifiantly faster than js so I think it's safe to say that it failed its main objective.
I think this[0] summarises the main objective of Dart. Having said that I fail to see how it succeeded. Maybe it helped JavaScript evolve a bit but IOS development experience and performance is still vastly superior to Dart/JavaScript/Web.
[0] `The emergence of compelling alternative platforms like iOS has meant that the web platform must compete on its merits, not just its reach. Javascript as it exists today will likely not be a viable solution long-term. `
Lars Bak made V8, and both Kasper Lund and Lars Bak contributed the HotSpot VM. And if you don't consider Gilad Bracha (Who works on the Dart Language Specification) to be a language designer, you probably don't have a clue what he has done.
How is that? As far as I can remember performance was always the main reason. The main contributor previously worked on hotspot. It was argued that javascript hit the limits on performance and you need a clean slate, especially due the low power of the mobile devices. "Batteries included" and fixing the javascript syntatic issues was presented as secondary objective. This might have been changed after the VM was dropped from the project. Dart was supposed to be a response to native apps which failed miserably. It's a well design ecosystem for sure but it can't even compete with javascript, let alone native apps.
You are right. Perhaps I heard only I wanted to hear. Anyway here is a talk about performance so definitely it was marketed as a high performance language for the web too.
https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Performance-V8-Dart
The keyword you are looking for is Dartium (Chrome with Dart support compiled), and if you are benchmarking a Dart app in Dartium vs. a JS app in any of the browsers, chances are the Dartium app will be faster. The technical goal was achieved, the political support lacked.
Even with Dartium it didn't reach a speed close to native. I don't doubt that if more effort would be put in the VM the perf could get better but as it is now Dartium is no longer an option.
Dartium doesn't need to be close to native, it just needs to beat every JS engine out there; in other words: the comparison should be in the same league. Last time I've checked it did beat them.
Actually it needs because it was supposed to compete with the mobile/ios/native apps not with javascript. I don't think anyone was thinking to replace javascript with something only slightly better.
If you are really looking for mobile/native development in Dart, I'd suggest you to check out Flutter (https://flutter.io/). It can achieve 60 fps on mobile apps, which is great in my view.
But I doubt that you are really interested in any of these. I've got the impression that you only try to find a justification of not using Dart, which is fine, but looks a bit weird when you are masking political decisions as technical ones.
I need someone to convince me that Dart is worth the switch and that it is safe for long terms investment. Having said that I geniunely tried Dart about 2 years ago. The plan was to try it for a small/admin app and then migrate the main app to Dart as well. Unfortunately there were issues with E2E testing; if I remember there was no Karma-like framework and on top of that the app froze several times on safari mobile. So at that time it was risky and it clearly had some technical issues. Now we know that the VM won't get into Chrome and it seems the new technologies(WASM, JS upgrades) put Dart in a difficult position.
Is there any reference/complex mobile webapp 100% Dart powered?
maybe for the mobile version (flutter is early stage, so i didn't expect Google to use Dart there [https://flutter.io/]. The last mobile webapp i worked on was just replaced with a native version which runs smoother, so i guess native development beats webdev at the moment).
How about with the web version for desktop?
The announcement showed advanced ui-elements: [https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/GRV687LnnWpFCpPcQ6vxjd_kEQ...]
So a primitiv result there would indeed be a disappointment.
It might still be work in progress. I guess they started 4 month ago with the rewrite?!
There is nothing in dart that would freeze it on safari, except that large app are slow on safari, regardless of dart. Btw. the linked benchmarks are server-side.
I think the performance is there, it's just gained from JS VM optimizations instead of an alternative VM in the browser. The advantage is that it gets the benefit on all browsers (even those that would never add a Dart VM) and all other xxxToJS languages get the benefit as well.
Dart has enough other advantages so being on par with others on performance doesn't mean Dart has to die.
I'm developing with Dart full-time since about 1 1/2 years and I'm just glad that I don't have to use JS anymore.
JS has still more libs ready to use but the quantity and quality of the packages available for Dart are raising fast.
I enjoy that I can use the same language client- and server-side and share a lot of code. Upcoming features will make Dart even more appealing (Appengine support, DartVM in Chrome, async/await, ...) The Dart team is always busy improving the ecosystem :-)
I recently heard someone (Gilad?) say that it's still not "a done deal", but they're confident it will be agreed. Can't come soon enough for me; will make convincing others that Dart is here to stay much easier.
This is an interesting question. Almost any language is better than JavaScript. JavaScript is fine for small event handlers in a guestbook sized app but for more complex applications it's just a PITA (I didn't say it isn't possible to build more complex apps though).
'Incredible immature' is plain wrong. Dart is quite mature.
The biggest disadvantage is the availability of libraries (packages) but otherwise it is very comfortable to work with.
There are already packages for most requirements but the available selection is still small and they often don't have all the features you are looking for.
