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When people say they like/long for Java I usually understand that they like the tooling support and robustness of language/api/libraries and ecosystem in general.

I think Dart looks very promising in that regard especially when you compare it to JavaScript without feeling as heavyweight as Java.

Dart is actually a very terse and expressive language. Less ceremony and feels much more like other dynamic languages like Python or Ruby. Yet having optional typing and simple semantics it is one of the dynamic languages with extraordinary tooling support.

In a way Dart gives you the best of both worlds. It takes the good parts and leaves out the bad :)

1 comments

Yeah, the tooling of Java is nice. But it kinda seems like Java would be not usable without them. Also the code-generators are giving me the willies D:

It depends on the style of Java code being written.

There was a period from 1995 until around 2001 or so where much Java code was developed without using IDEs. It was generally simpler, with shallower class hierarchies, and much less emphasis on design patterns. Such code could be easily written, understood and maintained without using extensive IDEs and other tools.

Things changed once Eclipse and other IDEs started to become more widespread, and some people went overboard using design patterns that are impractical to work with without the use of IDEs, or otherwise introducing complexity that just didn't arise earlier.

It's still possible to write the simpler, sensible style of Java code. It's just that most people who lean that way end up using C++, Go, Python, or some other language instead.