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0 pointstomComb3y ago0 comments

Yes, it may well be killed, but that’s Ok - it’s an experiment. But, yes, you need to take that into account before investing time in it. The other mistake that I think people make is assuming that because Google is a giant Corp. these things will move quickly, when in fact Google often puts small teams on non-critical projects.

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cogman103y ago

6 years of development and deployed to actual products is an experiment?

The issue I have with Google is it's never clear to outsiders when projects are simply "experiments" that google is going to kill later. Dart, GWT, Angular Dart, for example, seemed like more than "experiments" yet google did a soft kill on Dart and effectively a hard kill on GWT.

You learn that something is "an experiment" when all the sudden updates slow or stop and the mailing list stops getting responses.

I don't trust google software because google bureaucracy is fickle and unpredictable.

ErikCorry3y ago

> The issue I have with Google is it's never clear to outsiders when projects are simply "experiments" that google is going to kill later.

Well if it's any comfort that's not clear to the Googlers either.

On the other hand if something is done by a startup there's also no way to know how much of a future it has. At least if it's open source then you have time to migrate to something else if Google stops investing in it. All the examples you name are Open Source.

And I don't think it's accurate to say Google did a "soft kill" on Dart. I don't recall any time when they reduced the manpower on the project, excepting perhaps the Dartino/Fletch (embedded Dart), which was explicitly labelled as tentative and experimental. These days things are going great for Dart.

abdulla3y ago

Dart is core part of Flutter: https://flutter.dev

What makes you say it's being killed?

cogman103y ago

Before it was a part of flutter it went through years of silence and effective death.

From roughly 2013->2015 the mailing list was practically silent on dart.

Even then, the language got "rebooted" with a v2 in 2018 to try and stir up some new life in a language everyone thought was dead.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

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cogman103y ago

6 years of development and deployed to actual products is an experiment?

You learn that something is "an experiment" when all the sudden updates slow or stop and the mailing list stops getting responses.

I don't trust google software because google bureaucracy is fickle and unpredictable.

ErikCorry3y ago

> The issue I have with Google is it's never clear to outsiders when projects are simply "experiments" that google is going to kill later.

Well if it's any comfort that's not clear to the Googlers either.

abdulla3y ago

Dart is core part of Flutter: https://flutter.dev

What makes you say it's being killed?

cogman103y ago

Before it was a part of flutter it went through years of silence and effective death.

From roughly 2013->2015 the mailing list was practically silent on dart.

Even then, the language got "rebooted" with a v2 in 2018 to try and stir up some new life in a language everyone thought was dead.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse