Ask HN: Should Go and Dart be combined into one language? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Should Go and Dart be combined into one language?

6 pointszigzag3124 comments

I know each was designed for different purposes and that they have different syntax.

However, what if, they were combined into a single, unified language?

Both languages are made by Google, have GC and are AOT compiled. C# has both classes and structs which are quite different and serve different purposes. Go-Dart combined language could mirror this and combine Go's structs and Dart's classes. Structs would focus on high-performance programing and classes would focus on more expressive and easier code.

I don't know, if it would be technically possible. Combined super language certainly wouldn't be backward compatible with neither Go or Dart.

But, this would give us:

- one big ecosystem instead of two smaller ones, and

- enable more code sharing between backend & frontend.

This is completely hypothetical. I just wanted to toss out an idea for some discussion. What are your thoughts on the matter?

Maybe just make using Go code in Dart easier, one way FFI style.

Then again, I don't think I do whatever Go is meant for and I'm kind of biased against being all that interested. It doesn't seem like it's that much above C/C++, and not that much easier than Rust, nor is it being pushed for things that really need low level control that much.

It seems like it's just built to appeal to minimalists, whereas Dart is almost easier than Python, everything works, there's an obvious way to do everything.

Maybe it would be more interesting to consider - if Flutter was built in Go, would Dart have a reason to exist? It seems that aside from Flutter Go is a superset of Dart in terms of library and board community support / usage.

Better FFI interop with Go might be interesting, though the lack of classes in Go might be a stumbling block to front-end devs more used to OOP.

As a dev that uses Go frequently, and dabbles in Dart / Flutter, I would not complain!

I don't think it makes a lot of sense to combine the languages. Your first point is the key: they are different tools made for different jobs.

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