However there is a lot of talk about how this will affect the web community. JavaScript has been around for years, why should we switch to another language now? My personal feelings on the subject is that if there isn't much performance gain from Dart then it will be really slow for browser venders to switch to it (obviously). With the rise of the mobile market and how slow mobile browsers are, if Google creates a smash with Dart, if it is 10 times faster than JavaScript it is a sure guarantee that Web Developers will switch to it.
Running 10 times faster will not, by itself, make web developers flock to Dart. Raw speed is never the primary issue- whether it's "fast enough" is all that matters, and JavaScript is "fast enough" for the vast majority of web applications- it's even fast enough to do real-time mp3 decoding.
ReplyDeleteJavaScript won because it is ubiquitous- a JavaScript program will run in any modern browser, and that fact alone is enough to overcome every complaint that has ever been levied against the language. Dart will only replace JavaScript if it's implementations becomes similarly ubiquitous, and other browser vendors are not going to implement it based solely on the expectation of greater speed.
I'm assuming 10 times faster is an exaggeration. If it did get that type of speed why wouldn't most developers flock to it? However, this is very unlikely and what will sell it is its usability by developers and their users.
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