The project page is very unclear, so I ended up on Wikipedia instead. Wikipedia actually has a leaked memo that seems to do a really good job describing the purpose of the language.
Specifically, the language is meant for three environments: server-side, compiled to JavaScript client-side, and fast native client-side once there is browser support. (The main goal is better performance on the client-side, which is deemed to be very difficult with JavaScript.)
However, the language looks so Java-like, one wonders why they didn't just use Java and extend GWT with a native Java client in Chrome. Did it just not make sense to bet the farm on Java when Oracle controls it?
Also, what does the "structured" in "structured web programming" mean?
Dart doesn't really share much with GWT. The basic language semantics are dynamic, not static. The types are more or assertions and documentation that generate runtime warnings, but do not produce compile time errors that refuse to let the app run at all.
> Also, what does the "structured" in "structured web programming" mean?
I would guess it's a reference to the optional static typing. There's a growing movement behind static typing and functional programming that resembles the movements behind dynamic typing and OOP of a decade ago...
I'd guess it's also a lot about class-based vs. prototype-based. The latter often leads to messy architectures. It might be an intrinsic characteristic of prototype-based design, or because 99% of people learn OOP with a class-based language, I don't know.
The project page is very unclear, so I ended up on Wikipedia instead. Wikipedia actually has a leaked memo that seems to do a really good job describing the purpose of the language.
Specifically, the language is meant for three environments: server-side, compiled to JavaScript client-side, and fast native client-side once there is browser support. (The main goal is better performance on the client-side, which is deemed to be very difficult with JavaScript.)
However, the language looks so Java-like, one wonders why they didn't just use Java and extend GWT with a native Java client in Chrome. Did it just not make sense to bet the farm on Java when Oracle controls it?
Also, what does the "structured" in "structured web programming" mean?