Dart

Dart (originally called Dash) is a Web programming language developed by Google. It was unveiled at the GOTO conference in Aarhus, 2011 October 10-12. The goal of Dart is "ultimately to replace JavaScript as the lingua franca of web development on the open web platform."

Motivation: Dart is intended to solve JavaScript's problems (which, according to a leaked memo, cannot be solved by evolving the language) while offering better performance, the ability "to be more easily tooled for large-scale projects" and better security features. Google offers a cross compiler that compiles Dart to ECMAScript 5, for compatibility with non-Dart browsers. Google also plans to integrate a native VM into Chrome (there is now a Chromium branch available) and encourage competitors to do the same with their browsers.

Compilers: dartc compiles Dart to plain JavaScript. Frog is a new Dart compiler written in Dart; while it does not yet have all the capabilities of dartc, it generates much more optimized code. On November 18, 2011, Google released Dart Editor, an open-source Dart editor based on Eclipse components, for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux.