Last Monday, October 10^th 2011, Google presented a new programming language, which is supposed to be an alternative to JavaScript. This language is destinated to Web applications. So, it’s still on testing phase, and the interested can start to experiment.

DART is the name suggested by Google at a conference in Denmark, which was detailed on a message published at the company blog. The Software Engineer, Lars Bak, wrote the next text at GoogleCode blog:

Today we are introducing an early preview of Dart, a class-based optionally typed programming language for building web applications. Dart’s design goals are:

• Create a structured yet flexible language for web programming.
• Make Dart feel familiar and natural to programmers and thus easy to learn.
• Ensure that Dart delivers high performance on all modern web browsers and environments ranging from small handheld devices to server-side execution.

Dart targets a wide range of development scenarios: from a one-person project without much structure to a large-scale project needing formal types in the code to state programmer intent. To support this wide range of projects, Dart has optional types; this means you can start coding without types and add them later as needed. We believe Dart will be great for writing large web applications.

Dart code can be executed in two different ways: either on a native virtual machine or on top of a JavaScript engine by using a compiler that translates Dart code to JavaScript. This means you can write a web application in Dart and have it compiled and run on any modern browser. The Dart VM is not currently integrated in Chrome but we plan to explore this option.

The language comes with a set of basic libraries and tools for checking, compiling, and running Dart code, all of which will evolve further with your participation. We’ve made the language and preliminary tools available as open source on dartlang.org. Check out the site to give feedback, learn more about Dart, and participate in its development.

We look forward to rapidly evolving Dart into a solid platform for structured web programming.

Source: GoogleCode

Will this new language comes to stay? Google has been launching many pre-releases, Will it succeed, or will just be another failure?