On Friday, July 27, 2012 4:53:43 PM UTC+2, Andrei wrote: > > A few thoughts on the future of GWT. > > 1. GWT, as we currently know it, will die. It will be replaced by a more > "native" way of writing apps for the web. This process will take years. > Hopefully, GWT will also adjust, keeping its relevance for a long time. > Elemental is the step in that direction. > > 2. Google wants to kill Java. It started with a lawsuit from Oracle - > Google responded by launching Dart and Go. It won't be clear for at least > another year if either Dart or Go become viable alternatives to Java. I > will not be surprised if both of these efforts will be quietly abandoned by > Google now that the threat from Oracle is over. They will most likely make > no such decision any time soon, but I would not recommend starting any > major projects in Dart for at least another year. >
I absolutely do NOT agree with the above two points. Dart isn't there to replace GWT, it's been created to compete with JavaScript (and compile to JavaScript for a smooth transition: you don't want to code your app twice, right?) because the dynamic nature of JavaScript makes it really hard to optimize JS engines. And Go has been created to compete with C++, at least for some usage of it ( http://commandcenter.blogspot.fr/2012/06/less-is-exponentially-more.html) Finally, I cannot see a single reason Google would like to kill Java. Sure there was the Oracle lawsuit, but Google has too much dependency on Java. Switching over from Java would likely kill Android, and could cost Google way too much to be a viable move, unless Google would have no other choice (e.g. if Oracle had won the case, but then Oracle would have killed Java, not the other way around). 3. Even though GWT is not as enthusiastically supported by Google as it > should be (in my opinion), I would certainly recommend against forcing your > team to learn a completely new platform. If you are a Java shop, GWT is the > best available option for any project starting this year. > > 4. Web browsers have really matured (i.e. stabilized) over the past couple > of years. Unless you are building a cutting-edge 3D game or a web-based > replacement for Photoshop, your new GWT app will stay relevant for a > decade. It will morph, like all good projects do, but GWT is a very solid > foundation for data manipulation, i18n, history management, and page > rendering. And you can add as much (or as little) HTML5 and CSS3 on the > presentation side as you want - I don't feel like GWT is restricting me in > any way. > +1 to that though (even though you'd have to recompile your app regularly against the updated versions of GWT if you want it to last "a decade": browsers have matured, but GWT still has to handle each one of them specifically; in the future maybe we'd have a single permutation across all browsers, but until then, GWT will have adapt to each new browser version, and your app would have to be recompiled with the newer version of GWT to take advantage of it. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google Web Toolkit" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/google-web-toolkit/-/UM-TfOo_ar0J. To post to this group, send email to google-web-toolkit@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to google-web-toolkit+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/google-web-toolkit?hl=en.
