GWT - download it now.
rzwitserloot posted in programming on December 23rd, 2006
… because it’s that good (here). I’ve built a rather extensive webapp (on contract) inside of 2 months with it, and it’s one giant AJAX fest. In the mean time my server-side stuff consists entirely of static plain files (the stuff GWT compiles to) and some simple servlets that read and write JSON.
Which means my code is extremely maintainable and simple, and I get a free API out of the deal for others to use.
It’s building full webapps with just Java (servlets), Java (GWT), Java (Jetty) and CSS. No HTML required. No fancy java framework required - because writing servlets that read and write JSON code is trivial, and Jetty can do COMET if you need it. No need to know much about browser quirks. No need to know anything about HTML.
It doesn’t get any easier than that to get into web development.
There’s an interesting talk on compiling Java to JavaScript by Scott Blum, Google’s lead at the GWT project, about how Java makes GWT the best javascript toolkit on the block. I suggest you read it - it’s filled with tiny little goodies that are much easier with a statically typed language.
Full Disclosure: pyjamas is the python version of GWT. It starts with a nicely arrogant introduction and it’s not actually finished or practical yet. I doubt it’ll ever be as efficient as GWT is in producing tight, fast, small, javascript.
December 23rd, 2006 at 20:45
GWT looks nice, and I think it is entirely possible that the Python project will catch up and do something better. Don’t dismiss it just because you don’t like the language its implemented in. After all, useful applications have been written in terrible languages such as C++, etc.
December 23rd, 2006 at 22:59
Did you read the article? A lot of GWT features are possible because of java’s static nature. e.g. compile-time (in the sense of GWT compiling .java to .js) analysis of used classes and the like.
There’s also GWT’s primary motivation: The opinion that JS doesn’t scale. I feel quite comfortable deferring to google’s judgement when it comes to building scalable (in the development, not speed sense) web apps.
Python doesn’t scale nearly as well as java. See article, again.
December 24th, 2006 at 23:28
Personally I wouldn’t code in a language without function types/closures (Java) just to compile to a language that has them (JS).
December 24th, 2006 at 23:39
@Slave Pestov: explain?
December 25th, 2006 at 12:00
@Cris: Slava has a tendency to troll, which I tolerate, because sometimes he manages not to knee-jerk a response and instead posts something more or less intelligent.
In this case, he hasn’t read the article or didn’t deign himself to comment on it, and has instead posted either a knee-jerk response or something designed to annoy me and other java evangelists.
The answer to his gripe is already more than dealt with in the linked article.
December 25th, 2006 at 14:36
I did read the article.