Google's JavaScript killer is progressing nicely, but it's still only used by Google

Oct 17, 2012 08:25 GMT  ·  By

Creating your own programing language for the web, a "JavaScript killer" seems to be the latest trendy hobby among tech companies. Mozilla is doing it, Google is doing it, even Microsoft is doing it more recently.

Google's Dart, which has been in the works for several years, is now celebrating its first birthday, since the public release, and it's doing it with the launch of the first Dart SDK.

"A year ago we released a technology preview of Dart, a project that includes a modern language, libraries and tools for building complex web applications," Google's Lars Bak wrote.

"Today, after plowing through thousands of bug reports and feature requests from the web community, a new, more stable and comprehensive version of Dart is now available and ready to use," he said.

The new release comes with plenty of improvements. Google boasts about a new Dart Virtual Machine that is faster than V8, the JavaScript engine in Chrome, in Octane, the JavaScript benchmarking suite created by Google.

There's also a new JavaScript translator, for spewing code that can be interpreted by all web browsers and you can even add JavaScript code to the mix, on the fly.

There's a new HTML library, so you can use Dart to modify web pages at the DOM level, just like you can do with JavaScript.

Also new is an editor dedicated completely to Dart, to make it easier to write and debug Dart code. This goes hand in hand with Dartium, a version of Chrome/Chromium that natively supports the programming language.

The new Dart SDK also comes with Pub, a new package manager, and a server-side I/O library if you want to use Dart for server apps, Node.js style.

If you're looking to get started with Dart or just want to check it out, the Dart Editor is a good place to start. It comes with the SDK and Dartium built in, so the Editor is all you need to get coding.

Google's Seth Ladd talks about Google Dart