Dart 3.4: WASM and Macros preview
medium.com
medium.com
Dart is my favorite language right now. The tooling is incredible because they learned from Go's success. Because it compiles to native, it's great for CLI programs. It can also ship as a single binary for servers.
It's good at so many things, but it's not the best at any one thing. I think that's why it hasn't gotten the same usage as other languages.
What’s the state of wasmgc? Is it supported by the major browsers yet? How big are dart apps compiled to wasm?
https://docs.flutter.dev/platform-integration/web/wasm#backg...
> Chromium and V8 released stable support for WasmGC in Chromium 119. Note that Chrome on iOS uses WebKit, which doesn't yet support WasmGC. Firefox announced stable support for WasmGC in Firefox 120, but currently doesn't work due to a known limitation.
You can also check here: https://webassembly.org/features/
> How big are dart apps compiled to wasm?
I just did `dart compile wasm main.dart -O4` with an empty dart file and got a 68k wasm file. That gzip's to 24K.
Was it a better Javascript? Oh, old history
Was it just a failed project that Google Analytics team used? Oh, old history
It's for Flutter and app development? Not anymore
It's native cross-platform compiled language for apps and backend with a hodgepodge of features haphazardly thrown in? Yes, for now.
Might be my ignorance as a beginner but I don't see a hodgepodge of haphazard features, but the beginning of a true cross platform language.
Was it just a failed project that Google Analytics team used? No.
It's for Flutter and app development? It's a general-purpose programming language.
It's native cross-platform compiled language for apps and backend? It's a general-purpose programming language with multiple compilation targets, including native.
hodgepodge of features haphazardly thrown in? Certainly not.
Web search was synonymous with Google until they enshittified their product to irrelevancy a few years back. Where once using Bing was unthinkable, several of my coworkers now happily use it.
They then proceeded to fumble the incredible lead they had with AI just a few years ago. At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if they let their Chrome monopoly slip through their fingers as well.
It's ridiculous how Google's BoD hasn't axed everyone in a leadership role at that company given how many gems they've let slip through their fingers.
It's clear you didn't see the fervor around this around a decade ago [0][1], as it was universally panned as a move that would only strengthen Google's browser monopoly (as if sites started using more Dart, other browsers would have no choice but to add in Dart support). Personally I am very glad that we don't have a built-in Dart compiler in the browser, compile to JS languages are more flexible and now we have an even more robust and even-handed solution in the form of WASM, as now any language can compile to an open standard, not just Dart (which also has WASM support now).
Another argument in favor of not having Dart in Chrome is allowing its development to be much more flexible, as this article shows, rather than being hampered by the standards committee [2].
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3600874
Personally I think they did the right thing pivoting away from trying to replace JavaScript.
Plus what the sibling comment said about Google monopoly.
What do you mean?? Did you read the article, because it is clearly about Dart and Flutter.
[1]: https://techcrunch.com/2024/05/01/google-lays-off-staff-from...