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Google+ Technological Details

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Re: Google+ Technological Details

#4

Post by mark_l_watson »

clintjhill wrote: post #3

I would love to hear why GWT wasn't used more. It seems to me that GWT is not widely used even at Google.

I use GWT (and SmartGWT which is based on GWT) a fair amount, and this is just my opinion:

GWT is targeted at Java developers who want to create rich client applications. The development environment (I use IntelliJ) is reasonably agile and there is a rich set of components to use. So, a nice developer experience for Java developers who don't want to use other languages (like Javascript).

That said, GWT seems a little heavy weight and for large and well funded projects it makes sense to hire Javascript experts and then frameworks like JQuery or Clojure probably make much more sense.

Re: Google+ Technological Details

#5

Post by RyanDScott »

jrydberg wrote: post #2

Is google killing GWT?

I doubt it. Based on the number of sessions at Google IO this year for GWT (many) and the number of sessions for Closure (one?), I would say they were outwardly pushing GWT much more than Closure.

I wish they would come out with more JavaScript tools. I have used GWT for a couple side projects, and while the tools and library are amazing, writing an app the "GWT Way" (using all the design patterns) is cumbersome and difficult, especially for a one-man-show.

Closure is better in this regard (mostly by virtue of being a JavaScript library instead of a Java library, IMO), but it's still overkill for quick side projects where something like underscore.js would suffice.

Why would they use Closure instead of GWT? Closure is just JavaScript. No waiting for the GWT team to build the features you need, no having to build those features yourself. And in my experience, when I need cutting edge with GWT, I end up writing a bunch of wrappers for JavaScript functions, which makes me wonder why I'm not writing everything in JavaScript. (Like I said, the GWT library is very compelling and when planning a large project, Java often feels more comfortable for some.)

So no, I doubt they are killing GWT, but it would sure be nice to see them develop some comparable JavaScript tooling (as one of their main points for choosing Java as the language of GWT is because of the quality of the existing Java tools).

Re: Google+ Technological Details

#7

Post by mattdeboard »

protagonist_h wrote: post #6

Java? so uncool! I wonder why Google doesn't use one of those sexy functional languages. They could at least use Scala.

I know this is some heavy-handed sarcasm but even still, "sexy" is not a word I think many people would use to describe functional languages.

Re: Google+ Technological Details

#9

Post by akronim »

clintjhill wrote: post #3

I would love to hear why GWT wasn't used more. It seems to me that GWT is not widely used even at Google.

GWT is awesome if you have a team of Java developers who aren't really web developers. You can be productive without having all the HTTP/css/javascript/html skills you would need otherwise (though you still want someone on your team who can look at the details underneath the abstraction).

But if you want something as fast and as scalable as possible, of course you can do better by working at a lower level.

Re: Google+ Technological Details

#10

Post by nl »

clintjhill wrote: post #3

I would love to hear why GWT wasn't used more. It seems to me that GWT is not widely used even at Google.

From a Googler:

There are several hundred projects within Google using GWT and more are being written or rewritten all the time. Some of the major ones:

AdWords UI

AdSense UI

Blogger (http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/14/half-a-billion-blog-posts-l...)

Groups (new UI)

Doclist (the folders in docs, both desktop and mobile versions)

Parts of Maps / Geo

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/google-web-toolkit/M...

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