And I never said you did, so stop echoing my phrases. You called my "JS ain't gonna be replaced" flamebait, not goalpost moving. (I cited your obvious goalpost shifting, from "Dart helps uplift JS" to "at least we get great tools"; separate point!)
JS replacement wasn't ever a goal. I noted it can't be done, so it's not a goal. Nothing shifted. This fact is a painful truth that I cited as the minor premise of a syllogism:
Major: Web needs better programming language support than current JS, and soon. (The Dash memo was not wrong on this, although it overstated how mobile native stacks have better languages when the bigger issue is app/device/system APIs.)
Minor: JS cannot be replaced. (Anyone want to argue this?)
Therefore: JS needs to be improved soon. Easy to agree but harder to do, yet it is being done, e.g., ES6, SoundScript, plus over-the-top but informative tooling such as Flow and TypeScript.
We were arguing about the best way to improve JS. Since it can't be replaced, an entirely new second language and VM, especially without equivalent compile-to-JS semantics via JS uplift (bignums, more), has drawbacks:
* Super-expensive. (Other vendors won't do it without third bullet: market power abuse.)
* Leaves JS uplift to "later". (We've already seen this happen with bignums, but not with SIMD due to John McCutchan going extra miles.)
* Tempts market power abuse, a la ActiveX. (Not yet a real problem for the Web.)
In no way is there a goalpost to move about JS replacement. It's not in the cards. The only issue is how big a chunk of work and "time out" from improving JS should one take to test and bake new ideas.
To return to this HN thread, SoundScript is a quite-big chunk of work and time-out (much of this year, for some of the V8 team), yet it still looks aligned with the grain of the Web.
Dart without more JS uplift than the fine SIMD work is too big a chunk of work to produce much fruit for the Web soon.
Clear enough?