Ask me if I care that it doesn’t use CSS for page layout. I’ll ask you, “Does it look good in all browsers?”, to which you reluctantly reply “yes”. Inherent cross-browser compatibility is one in a long list of HUGE pros that GWT has going for it. Sometimes, very rarely, you can have your cake and eat it too.

Also, there are two points that have not been stressed enough. First, GWT does NOT have to control your entire web app; GWT can be embedded as a small part of any web page. Second, GWT provides for writing JavaScript directly, so any limitations of Java-JavaScript compilation are irrelevant.

Switching to GWT is like switching to Spring; you never go back.

So it seems that a big question is: is it better to use JAVA to abstract js or is better to use JS libs to abstract js? or does come down to situation? I could see that using java used for larger and more complicated web apps maybe be more manageable , but could have a steeper learning curve and longer startup time, plus of course you need to know JAVA…. Where JS libs may turn out to be quick and fast but eventually become complicated to manage. These are only guesses because i am just looking into both. Has anyone had experience in yahoo apis, (which look incredible simple) and gwt , and how they compare in feel, ease of use ? and can suggest when to use and when not to, if at all?

Quite succinctly put. Just to put it in context: I’m somewhat of a JS specialist (not entirely by design, rather by accident) nowadays consulting for large coorporations to straighten out their Ajax nightmares. And it’s a mess out there I tell you.
In the real world, where there are a lot of different responsibilities when it comes to website/webapp creation (designers, backend programmers, frontend programmers, content providers etc), and the problems quickly mound up becoming a maintenance nightmare. Not that any of the technologies are bad, they are good for what they were meant for, but the layering of presentation logic that oh so easiliy can happen, and the fact that JS at the end of the day is a dynamically typed scripting language leads to the aforementioned seemingly inevitable nightterror. Java and similar languages were invented for a reason, and one of them were to insulate the programmer from his own shortcomings. Sorry for the star trek reference, but you need to have a company full of borg and only hire consultants that are borg to work in complete unison, aware of eachothers every thought to make the current hotchpotch that webapplications are, work. Work well anyway. Sure GWT has it’s own set of problems, but they are minescule in comparison. Resistance is futile.

I used to write Java code for the server-side, and then translate it to javascript code for the client-side. I cannot describe to you the maintenance headaches. GWT solves this instantly.

BTW, the “hello world” example is such an exageration. It’s like comparing a “hello world” web app done in Struts vs. one done in HTML — irrelevant.

But I agree with the other posters that there are advantages to GWT, mainly tested code and running on all browsers are the most important IMO, however less important now that there are great Javascript libraries available now like YUI.

I think the solution to graceful degradation is actually the use of a non-JavaScript toolkit (like GWT could be) which does not rely on JavaScript per sé.

For example, consider Wt (http://witty.sf.net), which allows a single implementation of event handling code to be either client-side JavaScript, server-side AJAX-based interaction, or plain CGI/HTML server-side interaction.

Obviously, you can never achieve this when you force the developer to produce JavaScript code. GWT could achieve it, I guess, but they either don’t care about it, or they haven’t realized they could, or they have messed up the design of their library.

Regards,
koen

type saftey? lines of code? what has that to do with anything? its so obvious that this random and mostly irrelevent collection of ‘points’ youve listed is nothing more than a (poor) attempt to back up your pre-conceived opinion.

If you want to prove anything, show us how a web application implemented in GWT is inferior to build, test, maintain and USE than a web application using whatever grab-bag of tools and techniques you favour.

you cant, because youve never developed a web application in GWT, have you?

Good discussion all around,

As far as type safety with Java, I really don’t feel and haven’t had a need for it. I started programming with Java and then moved to PHP, JS and Ruby. I haven’t once though “hey, I really need some type safety”. There might be some extreme cases where type safety is necessary, but in my experience I haven’t needed it.

Refactoring can be done in any language, not just Java.

There are some benefits like people have said to use GWT, but I think the outcome outweighs the benefits.

I was wrong with the fact that GWT is all or nothing. I’m glad to hear you can use it as little or as much as you want.

Serious sized JS libraries and/or JS files for web apps/sites are around 50k also. Some less, some more. Jquery is 20k, YUI starts around 3k and can go up to around 30-50k, depending on what you use. And many other JS libraries can do similar if not the same things GWT can do. (tabs, treeviews, history management, etc)

When I listed the files created by GWT, I knew only 1 was downloaded per client. I didn’t explain that, but I knew it.

The Rails framework does make it easy to do Ajax also. It does by default also create inline JS that breaks if JS is turned off. There is a patch for that thankfully. Rails ajax helpers are a little different in that they don’t create huge JS apps, they just add bits of functionality. I don’t think they are in the same league as GWT.

Using Java to write JS is not the same as using C to write assembler. Java and JS were created around the same time and are both high level languages. I’m no expert on C or assembler but I will guess that doing something in C will always be easier than doing something in assembler. Java code vs JS code to do the same task (no GWT) would probably yield similar results in implementation and code length.

I’m not quite sure how programming for the web with js/html/css is a mess. It’s pretty clean. HTML for content, css for presentation and js for behavior. There certainly are issues with the implementation of each, but most are well known and documented. Browsers aren’t perfect, but they are improving.

No idiot could come along and build a web application from zero knowledge. If they could do it with GWT, they could most likely do it with JS and/or a JS library. I’m not angry that GWT can help people do things they normally wouldn’t be able to do, that’s what other JS libraries do too. I’m not happy with the implementation.

We have full JS libraries to help us abstract away from the inconsistencies of browsers. Why should we abstract away into another language when we have a very powerful language built into browsers?

Yeah, I am biased. I think it’s best to develop libraries that help you written in your implementation language. I still took a look at GWT to see how it actually worked.

The web doesn’t need to be abstracted away forever. It needs to be FIXED!

I still think Google doesn’t understand the web completely. Yes, they totally understand how to get apps onto the web, and they are really great. But they don’t seem to have any knowledge of web standards, proper markup, accessibility and graceful degradation/progressive enhancement. This doesn’t relate completely to GWT, it’s to most Google apps.

“The bottom line is GWT doesn’t give a damn about the web and treats it as an inconvenient interface that needs to be avoided at all costs. And it does, but to a terrible outcome. The developers obviously do not understand the paradigms and principles of the web. It’s amazing the amount of work they put into creating this Java based toolkit when quite possibly a lesser amount of time could have been spent working on a great Javascript/HTML/CSS library (YUI, jQuery, Ext, Scriptaculous) that would promote web standards.”

Uh-huh. Translation “I spent my entire career learning all this stuff and now some idiot can come along and write a web application from a zero-knowlegde base in 3 months? ARRGHHHHH!!!!”

The “terrible outcome” – 100s of kilobytes (kilobytes mind you!!) of bloated, badly structured javascript that can do the same job as 50K of beautifully handcrafted javascript. Emphasis on _same job_.

the bit where he tells google they dont understand the web is priceless.