Google released its first stable version of Dart, a programming language for Web applications that it believes improves on the incumbent JavaScript language.

"I'm pleased to announce that the M1 release of Dart is ready...This release is a more stable and comprehensive version of Dart," said Lars Bak, a programmer and key figure in the project, in a mailing list message today about the milestone 1 release. "Moving forward, we'll mainly focus on performance and completeness without introducing breaking changes to the Dart programming language."

It's hard to get new programming languages to catch on -- especially a language that competes so directly with a widely used language with as many adherents as JavaScript has. But to improve Dart's chances, Google includes a lot more than just a programming language. The Dart project also offers Dartium, a special build of the open-source Chromium browser that can run Dart programs directly in its virtual machine; the Dart2JS compiler, which converts Dart software into JavaScript so it'll run on browsers without Dart virtual machine support; the Dart editor for programmers wanting to write and debug code; and accompanying libraries of pre-built code.

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