Google's JavaScript Replacement, Dart, Developed in the Dark

Google is one of the most powerful companies on the web. It also has some of the best engineers around and a very strong engineering culture. This enables the company to create great products, but also to push for new technologies and standards that others adopt.

Its size and power guarantee that anything it undertakes gets noticed. While Google has always been a supporter of standards, especially on the web, it's actions are increasingly at odds with its stated goals.

For example, a lot of development, be it for Google Chrome, or new web technologies actually happens behind closed doors, despite the code later being open sourced.

There are several reasons for this, some good some less so. Developing indoors enables developers to focus on the code and at the task at hand rather than catering to the community, responding to critics and having every decision scrutinized.

But Google may also believe that its engineers are simply better equipped than others to handle the development and doesn't want others interfering with what it does.

This is certainly true, to a degree, Google is certainly not lacking brilliant minds, but that doesn't mean that outside input can't be valuable.

Still, the closed doors policy is the path most often taken by Google. And developers are beginning to take notice.

The latest example of this policy and how it's backfiring against Google is Dart, formerly known as Dash, a new coding language designed to replace JavaScript.

It's still in the early stages, Google will unveil its progress in October. But it has worked on it in isolation so far. It may indeed be a great replacement for JavaScript, but Google is going to have a hard time convincing developers and browser makers to adopt Dart if it plans to continue to work on Dart alone.

JavaScript may not be perfect, but the reason why it became the most used coding language on the web is because it's a web standard, created by those with a stake in the area. Google itself is a big fan and supporter of JavaScript.