This blog post is about two months late since I gave the presentation / hosted a discussion about Dart over two months ago.
This is the first talk I did which was all code. I figured it was an intro to a language so everything should be in that language. I organized it via a github repo: https://github.com/lateefj/dart-intro I had all the slides opened in a vim tab and just when though each one demoing the code and discussing it.
There where three types of developers at the meeting (technically it was a Python/Django group but other came). These where some observations I had from the different groups.
Python/Django - They generally write backend software that uses mostly static web pages. Or generators like Rails, Django admin stuff. By and large they enjoy backend programming (Python / Ruby) and find Javascript for some snazzy UI stuff annoying to write in. Dart is not very appealing to them because it is a more taxing syntax "Javaish".
Java/GWT - By and large they see that Google is moving its mindshare to Dart from GWT and came wondering what all the hoopla is about. As a long time Java developer it is frustrating that the Java community has turned into a monolanguage culture. Since there is a library somewhere to do just about anything in Java it make most Java programmers look at everything with blinder. Dart looks like Java, smells like Java and specifically for GWT folks it generate Javascript so what is the point?
Javascript - The latest rage (or has it already died out). Anyway Javascript developers don't really see why an alternative is necessary.
In general I think everyone in the discussion found it interesting even if most couldn't figure out why? My motivations was to learn mostly by discussing it with other developers. Bottom line for the types of large web applications that I have been developing I have tried man approaches (GWT, Coffeescript ect) but it all comes down to Javascript was design and built in the 90's and it is very difficult to over come its limitations. Will leave my thoughts about Dart for the next post....
