Comments on C for Coding: Lost in Translation or Why GWT Isn’t the Future of...

Very well explanation about GWT.. keep going...

2010-08-17T14:43:13.832+08:00

Very well explanation about GWT.. keep going...

P.S. broswer abstraction (maybe by 90%) is another...

2010-07-08T21:49:38.792+08:00

P.S. broswer abstraction (maybe by 90%) is another big argument for a GWT approach

With untyped languages you'll sooner or later get ...

2010-07-08T21:48:22.990+08:00

With untyped languages you'll sooner or later get into trouble as applications become more and more complex, need to be troubleshot/maintained/migrated/etc. JS for the small-to-medium and/or prototype projects is nice, for the big/strategic things I prefer GWT plus 'widget set' (SmartGWT)

Ekki

The funny thing with these "the future is not x" a...

2010-05-08T06:58:18.655+08:00

The funny thing with these "the future is not x" articles is that they are so fun to look back at when the future has come, and it is x. Like the one that wrote "the internet is a flop and will die in a few years", sometime in 1996.

I just started writing my first GWT application. Yes, the compile time is a lill pain. Not anywhere NEAR the pain it would be to spend hours debugging the complex javascript code it would take to make the ajax application i build in no time using gwt.

I belive the future is ajax. Backends will respond as web services, not web pages build using JSP / PHP etc. Gwt is a techologie that is giving us a framework to do this in a type safe manner, with a good library, integrated into top IDE's.

I do not know if gwt is the future, but I belive it is going to be somewhat along those lines. Reading the comments, it seems your predictions are not shared by many.

Great article and thanks for highlighting my site!...

2010-04-12T15:31:10.047+08:00

Great article and thanks for highlighting my site!

www.maksansolutions.com

You are my hero. Amen.

2010-03-24T04:42:07.079+08:00

You are my hero. Amen.

I need to say that you are a joke sir.

2010-03-18T00:27:43.981+08:00

I need to say that you are a joke sir.

GWT is revolutionary and will allow the developmen...

2010-03-18T00:25:27.864+08:00

GWT is revolutionary and will allow the development of large complex apps on the browsers of all makes and shapes. Widgets will improve with time.

Good luck in your JavaScript world. You're going to need it.

I've used both heavily, and I'm both a Java and JS...

2010-03-16T09:17:10.151+08:00

I've used both heavily, and I'm both a Java and JS guy, so no language issues. I've got to say GWT is just amazing for building large complex Web 2.0 apps. The only points above that I can agree with in any way are about the widgets, and we've crafted our own - problem solved.

So nice to see so many comments on this subject, a...

2010-02-09T12:39:51.245+08:00

So nice to see so many comments on this subject, as they provide an opinion coming from a legit background.

Here is our website, kodingen.com an online IDE, we used PHP + Jquery on the frontend. I thought i showed you this to demonstrate the scale that i'm talking about.

Am I happy, no! It took us 4 months to make sure that everything works, since only testing we could do was to click everywhere. you tell me about your compile times.

Now I'm looking forward to the day that we port everything to GWT with Vaadin.

Why? because, php+js is a mess regardless how well you write it, compared to Java. Of course creating a mess doesn't limit itself to a specific language but if you have developed a large scale app like we did, you will know what I mean.

'you' know your classes, there is no one way of implementing them, there are no standards, and it's almost improbable to think that a large team will be fine with php+js (unless your father is rich), you will end up converting PHP to a compiled language as facebook did with HipHop if your website made it to 200 million users.

Even then, as it's name suggests, it's going to be a hiphop not a contemporary art.

I don't know the future, but now, if you are reading this and want to create something big or small, learn GWT, Java or Vaadin, you will thank me later. Here is my opinion about this

http://devrimyasar.com/blog/2009/11/22/finally-there-vaadin-godsend-on-gwt-google-app-engine/

Can't say I agree. I've worked with GWT, and with ...

2010-02-02T13:39:14.032+08:00

Can't say I agree. I've worked with GWT, and with php/js. GWT for complex RIA is far preferable.

GWT is brilliant, the problem lies more with usage...

2010-01-21T02:00:31.961+08:00

GWT is brilliant, the problem lies more with usage. Fact is, Java developers are generally not UI experts and it's a naive to think that with some widget or component framework like Ext, you have all you need to develop slick apps.

UI knowledge, SEO implementation, accessibility, progressive enhancement are usually not among the skillset of your average Java developer *if they are, you ROCK!* so any apps build with GWT might look sweet and it will work, but every other factor which is important to webdevelopment will be total and utter crap.

Seen some Java devs utilize GWT for enteprise applications. The HTML was crap, accessibility was crap, SEO was crap, there was no progressive enhancement present at all so if JS breaks somewhere on your page (due to third party scripts and you cant fix it because no one know JS), your app breaks. And even usability was crap, it did work, but waiting ages for a huge grid to load or chunking client side processes up in an evented model or basically any JS best practise idioms simply goes out of the window.

This is not the fault of GWT, you can do all of that, but for your average Java developer, it would take too much time because they *usually* haven't learned to create great UI's and are not familiar with JS idioms and methodology or how UI's are glued together in the first place.

That said, I am a *script kiddy* myself that works for a Java joint that deploys enterprise level applications. There's a lot wrong on all ends, wether it's script side or compile side, fact is, we're not there yet on either side.

Work with the tools and resources you have, read articles including the rants that follow to get a good view. Don't stick to one narrow minded opinion because chances are, you will be wrong, whatever you preach.

I agree with the author. Putting another layer to ...

2010-01-09T00:24:23.591+08:00

I agree with the author. Putting another layer to translate from Java to Javascript won't be the final solution to solve incompatability on different browser issue. Every browser is developing. How long will GWT to catch up to offer the latest features in browsers.

It is also awkward to make HTML, CSS, Javascript working perfectly in GWT.

ExtJS is not a good library either. Its memory leak is like a sieve!!!

Could you re-elaborate your thoughts thinking that...

2009-12-15T17:14:09.561+08:00

Could you re-elaborate your thoughts thinking that your comparison would be a lot more appropriate if it were worded like: "if you were to write a textbook for Germany (the "web") what language would you use knowing plain German won't work ("browser incompatibilities")?"

@Wyatt - There are GWT wrapper libraries for most ...

2009-12-15T03:49:43.817+08:00

@Wyatt - There are GWT wrapper libraries for most JS libs, but if none exist, yes, you'll have to write one, or call the JS directly using GWT's convenient JSNI. But you'll find that GWT makes many of these JS libs irrelevant. What are you looking for, widgets, effects, data marshaling? The GWT widget space is admittedly young, but it's growing quickly. See SmartGWT, GXT, GWT incubator, etc.

There is no impedence missmatch. No problem. Using...

2009-12-14T21:57:52.987+08:00

There is no impedence missmatch. No problem. Using this argument you should program in assembler, not javascript !

So what, you don't want to use java for client side and prefer javascript. That's your choice.

But i bet, it's not everyone choice ! Most of your arguments are Java vs Javascript comparison and how YOU prefer javascript.

That fine, but it's not necessary what every developper will think.

"if you were to write textbooks in German would yo...

2009-12-14T19:29:11.775+08:00

"if you were to write textbooks in German would you write them in German or write them in English and have a tool convert them to German?"

...simple, it depends on a few factors! If German is your native language I'd write it in German. But if you're not familiar with German or you barely can order can order a coup of coffee without looking up every second word in a dictionary and your German is still terrible... well, then I'd certainly use this converter. Also some things you can explain in English much less complicated than in German.

And finally, the killer argument FOR GWT: Google is behind this! If it's not yet a standard paradigm for web app development, it'll become one soon! Also GWT evolves very fast. And the side-effect – some code parts have to be rewritten if you upgrade your GWT SDK.

Implying that HTML + CSS + JavaScript + server sid...

2009-12-14T03:47:11.224+08:00

Implying that HTML + CSS + JavaScript + server side logic can't successfully be applied in a "software engineering" context is entirely bogus. Dynamic vs static typing, blah blah, yawn. Perhaps for some sufficiently large project, the JS approach wouldn't be sufficient, but I suspect that for the vast majority of Web apps it is. Yes, JS has some issues, but so does every language and programming environment.

Question: how do you integrate a 3rd party JS library into a GWT app? I don't have direct experience with this, but a coworker has said that the effort is non-trivial and that you either need to rely on a 3rd party adapter or write your own. For some (me), this is a non-starter.

Web development is a broad term for any activity t...

2009-11-19T21:05:00.998+08:00

Web development is a broad term for any activity to developing a web site for the World Wide Web or an internet. This can include e-commerce business development, web design, web content development, client-side/server-side scripting, and web server configuration. However, among web professionals, "web development" usually refers only to the non-design aspects of building web sites, e.g. writing markup and coding. Web development can range from developing the simplest static single page of plain text to the most complex web-based internet applications, electronic businesses, or social network services.

You really should take a look of Vaadin ( vaadin.c...

2009-11-15T17:51:55.035+08:00

You really should take a look of Vaadin ( vaadin.com ). It is built on GWT, but get away from the slow compilations by moving most of the UI to server. The widgets look really good ( demo.vaadin.com/sampler )and license is Apache 2.0.

Wholeheartedly agree that GXT is an inferior quali...

2009-11-14T03:33:21.524+08:00

Wholeheartedly agree that GXT is an inferior quality product. It might be a "pure" GWT third party library, but that doesn't make it a good product. It's "pure" crap if you ask me.

It's not just that the product has a lot of bugs but the product design and API's are fundamentally flawed. It's a copycat of Ext JS and a lot of design choices are not sound. Generics were introduced all over the place by the author who clearly had no clue how generics work. The users helped clean some of this but it's still very messy to work with.

GXT is a piece of s%$#@. Please, get away from it....

2009-11-13T03:46:19.947+08:00

GXT is a piece of s%$#@. Please, get away from it. Besides, they try to charge you for a bunch of bugs. But that's what you get when you force people to pay for debugging your application.

i also agree that GXT is horrible, because many o...

2009-11-12T21:40:02.141+08:00

i also agree that GXT is horrible, because many of the bugreports they are refuse it as "thats by design" :-(

"Give a man a hammer, and everything look like a n...

2009-11-11T18:24:58.966+08:00

"Give a man a hammer, and everything look like a nail"

That's definitely not the best approach to take to programming in general. There are many tools to use to accomplish a particular programming task, and you need to find the right one. GWT has its niche as does simple scripting, but at the end of the day, if you have 10 developers working on a large-scale rich-client web application, GWT is the holy grail. The code ends up being more maintainable and reusable, which is priceless in a business setting. If you're a solo coder trying to quick-fast-in-a-hurry get a simple site up, script away. Use the right tool for the job.

I actually find myself sometimes combining practices, writing scripts invoked from my Java code or vice versa, because a certain section of a project may lend itself to be written a certain way; or, I may have scripts around that I need to integrate that don't translate to Java.

So, is GWT the future of web development? Yes. Web applications are becoming increasingly complex and, more important, the audience is starting to expect this. In the past, people were used to downloading and installing desktop applications to accomplish major tasks; now, the power of web applications is being realized and people are actually using these apps. The more they use it, the more demands will be placed on developers to create even richer apps, more complex modules, and provide more services. As demand causes web applications to scale, a scalable platform will be the thing to have -- and that, is GWT.

Not to completely disregard you, you do make valid points, but I think your conclusion is wrong. Good thing everyone has their own opinions!

http://gogocarl.blogspot.com

Agree that GWT doesn't provide beautiful widgets, ...

2009-11-06T18:34:34.497+08:00

Agree that GWT doesn't provide beautiful widgets, but that isn't the point of GWT. It has been created as facilitator.

Disagree that GXT is terrible, whilst somethings relating to API consistency and design are indeed terrible on the whole it is a fantastic library.

I can't really comment on the JavaScript side of things, I have wrapped a few native methods in GWT but apart from that I know nothing.

GWT combined with GXT has enabled me to create an awesome professional services application that enables all consultants and staff to log in using any machine anywhere and do what was previously done via a crappy desktop client via RDP.

In conclusion, if you love javascript so much why don't you marry it and then use whatever expertise you have, I am assume you are a guru with javascript, to improve GWT in the areas that you have harped on about or create something better.