Also, writing this:

    > We don't want Dart to be a testbed for active programming
    > languages research, but I think we're open to taking up
    > ideas after they become well understood and unsurprising,
    > a.k.a. a little bit boring.

... after saying this in the first paragraph:

    > Dart uses types in a way that might seem strange. Most
    > popular languages that offer a type system use it very 
    > differently. If you're familiar with types in Java, Haskell, 
    > Scala, or any statically typed language, you may wonder 
    > why on earth Dart makes the choices that it does.

... makes me wonder why on earth Dart makes the type system choices that it does ;)