Kasper Peulen
2015-10-19 03:15:45 UTC
There is a lot of talk about Dart being not popular enough. I think most
people here love dart, and everybody thing he knows how Dart can get
popular, including me ;) But of course, most of this is just pure
speculation and guessing...
I think it is also easy to confuse your own wishes for the future of dart
with the things that really makes a language being picked up by the mass.
I think that Dart would get much more popular, if it pushed the tooling
support to be closer to what IntelliJ provides for Java or Visual Studio
provides for C#. But yeah, to be honest, that is just what I personally
would love. I have no idea what the "mass" wants. I once saw a poll that
showed the NotePad++ is still the most popular editor...
So therefore let's look some actual data for once, the stackoverflow
developer survey.
http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2015
One result that got my eye is "the most loved language of 2015". It turns
out to be Swift. It is not the most used language of course, but people
that use Swift love it, and programmers want to start coding in Swift.
Okay, so that is just a fact: *Swift is loved*. So, considering Dart 2.0
and breaking changes etc. I think it would be smart to very consider at
what Swift is doing. Because they do something right it seems, not only to
attract the mass, but also being loved.
One thing that Swift may does very well. Is that it looks very *familiar*,
but with all the familiarity it is never *completely* the same as you used
to, there seems in every feature always something that is a bit *better*
then you are used to from older languages. At least it pretends to be. For
example:
1. You can just declare variables as you used to, but you don't need a
semicolon anymore.
2. You can declare variables as constant (in dart we would say final).
But instead of writing the standard 5 letter word *const*, you can now
write a 3 letter word *let*. That lines up nicely with *var.*
3. You can just write if/else statements as you used to, but you don't need
parenthesis anymore.
1. if name == "world" {
2. print("hello, world")
3. } else {
4. print("I'm sorry \(name), but I don't recognize you")
5. }
6. 4. You can just write for statements like you used to, but instead of
writing for(int i = 0; i < 5; i++) you can now write:
7. for index in 1...5 {
8. print("\(index) times 5 is \(index * 5)")
9. }
10. 5. You can just write switch statements like you used to, but you
don't need break statements anymore:
11. switch someCharacter {
12. case "a", "e", "i", "o", "u":
13. print("\(someCharacter) is a vowel")
14. case "b", "c", "d", "f", "g", "h", "j", "k", "l", "m",
15. "n", "p", "q", "r", "s", "t", "v", "w", "x", "y", "z":
16. print("\(someCharacter) is a consonant")
17. default:
18. print("\(someCharacter) is not a vowel or a consonant")
19. }
5 . 6. You can write new instances of objects, but you don't need the new
keyword anymore:
1. let someResolution = Resolution()
2. let someVideoMode = VideoMode()
3. let vga = Resolution(width: 640, height: 480)
S
YSo well okay, I think you see the pattern. To be honest, all this little
sugar, is in practice not that important. In my eyes, in daily programming,
having a very good analyser, and debugging experience, is much more
important for productivity. However, I can understand that things like this
sells very well. If there are going to be breaking changes in dart 2.0, I
think it may be smart to consider what Swift is doing here. Swift is the
most loved language of 2015. Dart wants to get a little bit more love,
maybe learn a bit from a winning team?
a
1.
people here love dart, and everybody thing he knows how Dart can get
popular, including me ;) But of course, most of this is just pure
speculation and guessing...
I think it is also easy to confuse your own wishes for the future of dart
with the things that really makes a language being picked up by the mass.
I think that Dart would get much more popular, if it pushed the tooling
support to be closer to what IntelliJ provides for Java or Visual Studio
provides for C#. But yeah, to be honest, that is just what I personally
would love. I have no idea what the "mass" wants. I once saw a poll that
showed the NotePad++ is still the most popular editor...
So therefore let's look some actual data for once, the stackoverflow
developer survey.
http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2015
One result that got my eye is "the most loved language of 2015". It turns
out to be Swift. It is not the most used language of course, but people
that use Swift love it, and programmers want to start coding in Swift.
Okay, so that is just a fact: *Swift is loved*. So, considering Dart 2.0
and breaking changes etc. I think it would be smart to very consider at
what Swift is doing. Because they do something right it seems, not only to
attract the mass, but also being loved.
One thing that Swift may does very well. Is that it looks very *familiar*,
but with all the familiarity it is never *completely* the same as you used
to, there seems in every feature always something that is a bit *better*
then you are used to from older languages. At least it pretends to be. For
example:
1. You can just declare variables as you used to, but you don't need a
semicolon anymore.
2. You can declare variables as constant (in dart we would say final).
But instead of writing the standard 5 letter word *const*, you can now
write a 3 letter word *let*. That lines up nicely with *var.*
3. You can just write if/else statements as you used to, but you don't need
parenthesis anymore.
1. if name == "world" {
2. print("hello, world")
3. } else {
4. print("I'm sorry \(name), but I don't recognize you")
5. }
6. 4. You can just write for statements like you used to, but instead of
writing for(int i = 0; i < 5; i++) you can now write:
7. for index in 1...5 {
8. print("\(index) times 5 is \(index * 5)")
9. }
10. 5. You can just write switch statements like you used to, but you
don't need break statements anymore:
11. switch someCharacter {
12. case "a", "e", "i", "o", "u":
13. print("\(someCharacter) is a vowel")
14. case "b", "c", "d", "f", "g", "h", "j", "k", "l", "m",
15. "n", "p", "q", "r", "s", "t", "v", "w", "x", "y", "z":
16. print("\(someCharacter) is a consonant")
17. default:
18. print("\(someCharacter) is not a vowel or a consonant")
19. }
5 . 6. You can write new instances of objects, but you don't need the new
keyword anymore:
1. let someResolution = Resolution()
2. let someVideoMode = VideoMode()
3. let vga = Resolution(width: 640, height: 480)
S
YSo well okay, I think you see the pattern. To be honest, all this little
sugar, is in practice not that important. In my eyes, in daily programming,
having a very good analyser, and debugging experience, is much more
important for productivity. However, I can understand that things like this
sells very well. If there are going to be breaking changes in dart 2.0, I
think it may be smart to consider what Swift is doing here. Swift is the
most loved language of 2015. Dart wants to get a little bit more love,
maybe learn a bit from a winning team?
a
1.
--
For other discussions, see https://groups.google.com/a/dartlang.org/
For HOWTO questions, visit http://stackoverflow.com/tags/dart
To file a bug report or feature request, go to http://www.dartbug.com/new
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to misc+***@dartlang.org.
For other discussions, see https://groups.google.com/a/dartlang.org/
For HOWTO questions, visit http://stackoverflow.com/tags/dart
To file a bug report or feature request, go to http://www.dartbug.com/new
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to misc+***@dartlang.org.