Echo JS 0.11.0

There's nothing we can't do with JavaScript. We should improve this language which is already great and accepted as a standard.

Dart brings disruption and confusion to webdev ecosystem no matter how good it is, best choice is to avoid it.

We don't want another Java on the web. JavaScript is brilliant in itself. What we need is faster VMs.

Luckily, Dart isn't Java. Here's a good list of ways that Dart isn't Java. http://programming.oreilly.com/2013/05/dart-is-not-the-language-you-think-it-is.html

Some reasons:

* Dart is a source code runtime.
* Dart has optional types.
* Dart has collection literals.
* Dart is purely object oriented.
* Dart supports top-level functions and variables
* Dart’s main function is terse
* Dart lets you put any number of public classes into a file
* Dart has closures and lexically scoped functions
* Dart has mixins
* Dart has operator overriding
* Dart has string interpolation
* Dart has noSuchMethod

[disclaimer: I work on the Dart team]

Hope that helps,
Seth

A faster VM is the real goal of Dart, it's faster than JS, it even benches faster than Java in some cases.

It's gotten that fast in a lot less time with a lot less code, because it was designed from the start to be optimized for the VM. 

It's a different take on producing a faster VM for the web.  However I doubt it will ever make it past chrome so what's the point.  If you just target chrome you can use Portable Native Client if you need performance.

I wouldn't say Dart is worthless, it is actually a really interesting technology. Dart is definitely geared towards creating larger, more complex web applications.

Lots of developers are trying to create Single Page Applications with a very interactive experience. With this comes more client side code. Dart gives you the ability to better organize your application through packages (check out their package manager: http://pub.dartlang.org/). You get optional strong typing, which is always a plus for larger applications that need to be maintained over a long period of time.

Because Dart is it's own VM it could narrow the performance gap between native applications and web applications.

Lastly, Dart has an IO library that can be used to create the server side of web applications.

I'm going to wait a little longer before jumping onto the band wagon myself (have only fooled around with it a little), but I am looking forward to seeing how it matures over the coming months.

By worthless, I was alluding to the fact that all the performance related benefits are still hindered by browser incompatibilities and lack of support by other browser vendors. As an ecosystem, I think it is a pretty interesting piece of technology. I just have my doubts that it actually solves any "huge" problem. But I can imagine a good use-case, the enterprise. I believe something like Dart is more appealing to hermits who are still working with Java and .Net Stacks for the web (intranets and stuff like that). However, I just don't see it succeed with open-source, modular and startup-type tech. Again, I can be completely wrong about it, but if I'm allowed to use something like Node.js as a benchmark, there seems to be a huge difference in terms of adoption and growth speed between both, obviously in Node's favor. Anyway, you make some good points and I hope to hear from more people about it.

I think Dart will start to become interesting when they enable the Dart VM in Chrome by default. Then there'll be a real benefit for app developers (a speed upgrade), with a backward compatibility built in (compilation to JS for other browsers).

The other benefits (code organisation, language features, etc) are available in other "compile to JS" languages like CoffeeScript, TypeScript, ClojureScript, etc. In that regard, CoffeeScript benefits from a much wider adoption, making it a safer bet.

So personally I'm keeping an eye on it, waiting for its integration in Chrome.