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Wow. What I'm seeing so far is the people critical being entirely reasonable (if perhaps misinformed), and the people defending Dart being positively hostile about it, calling "circle-jerk" left and right.

This post takes the cake in hostility, so far, though.

And what's it need defending for? Some people try to discuss the merits and flaws in a reasoned manner. The childish behaviour you speak of is entirely yours.

I'm seeing some pretty spurious arguments. The idea that semicolons would be a point of contention is mind-blowing to me.

I'll take the alleged mob mentality over Google elitism any day of the week. Google can try to move the web any direction it feels is appropriate - it's Google's time, it's Google's money - but let's be clear: JavaScript is not as deficient as you might think it is, and the JavaScript community is not dumb to expect more than what Dart has offered so far (in an admittedly short span of time).

"There are just two kinds of languages: the ones everybody complains about and the ones nobody uses."

Probably over-quoted these days, but I think we all know where JavaScript falls.

"Probably over-quoted these days, but I think we all know where JavaScript falls."

Well, if the distinction is between the ones nobody uses and the one "everybody complains about", then we also know where Dart falls...

It's off to an auspicious start ;)

"well-designed" is actually the point of contention, is it not? You're blithely asserting facts not in evidence.

Smart, experienced people "taking a dump" on things that "don't feel right" to them are in fact valuable and worth paying attention to (even if you ultimately ignore them).

There are many, many cases of teams of brilliant people producing deeply flawed stuff that turns out to be useless. Apple's ATG produced many useless products on top of Lisp back in the day (SK8, Dylan,...). Dylan in particular was "well-designed" for certain values of "well-designed" that turned out to be insufficient — time will tell, but don't assume talent + money -> useful.

Google right now "feels" a lot like Apple ca. 1993.

> Think of how many "to JS" solutions there are. Seriously, google that. Like 20? 25?

What do you expect? The most important platform to write software for only accepts a single language. It doesn't matter how good the language is, people will be writing things that get converted to that language.

> How much "to C" solutions do you see getting on the front page of Hacker News these days?

Well, there's ShedSkin, and HipHop. But that's not the point. Anything that can run C can run [arbitrary other language]. Because, often enough, that arbitrary other language was written in C. Surely, by your terms, everyone who programs in Python is a desperate grasper hoping to escape C?

    The only reason it's fashionable to do so is 
    because it's Google. If this was some independent
    developer everyone would be falling over themselves 
    to dig in.

Except that there's nothing released to "dig in" and if this came from an independent developer I would barely open the link.