Re: Call for action: Time to rethink a road-map and more frequent updates for GWT.

I believe you are being over-pessimistic.

In my company we are using GWT since 2006 and we have build pretty large and complicated web-apps using GWT. Some webapps created in 2006 (using GWT 1.2) are still being used today without any problem on any modern browser. Normally old stuff keeps working in modern browsers. We do upgrade old projects to new versions of GWT if an old project needs a big update, but we have never updated any of our apps because it stopped working on new browsers.

Also note that GWT is opensource (today you can download the complete source-code, and compile it no problem).

Frank


Op vrijdag 13 april 2012 16:34:51 UTC+2 schreef Blake het volgende:

I strongly disagree with this.  First of all browser technology and HTML are in constant flux.  If GWT is not updated, it will very soon become out-of-date (bugs in new browsers) and unusable (reliably usable over a broad base of browsers and platforms).  Secondly, building apps with GWT is a full time job.  Having to understand and maintain GWT makes two full time jobs.  Building GWT apps could easily be a multi-million dollar effort - and so could maintaining GWT.  This is a huge, huge risk!

Another issue I've seen this many times before.  When Windows became popular, many developer tools appeared.  Many were quite good.  IMO, the worst development environment by far was Microsoft's MFC.  Virtually all of the other tools either sold out or got dropped.  Management often chose MFC over other tool because they were non-technical and the old IBM adage applied to Microsoft "no one ever lost their job by selecting Microsoft" ruled. In the end, the industry largely settled on the absolute lowest common denominator.  Innovation in that area, for all practical purposes, is dead.

Now we have ASP, JSP, and other popular mashups out there.  I am utterly shocked how poor they are (although to their credit, they are trying to solve practical problems given an environment that was clearly not meant to support what they are attempting!).  These environments are among the worst I've ever seen.  It's one kludgy work around after another with three totally different environments attempting to interact.  GWT goes a very long way to solve this very significant problem.  However, GWT is a total waste of time if you risk your entire company on it and it gets dropped.  In terms of financial risk, very unfortunately, tool popularity and support beats functionality, elegance, and productivity every time.

A statement of commitment from Google would make a huge difference to me.

Blake McBride

On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 7:52 AM, Frank <frank.wynants@gmail.com> wrote:

GWT will also not go away...
If you have downloaded GWT on your computer you just can keep using it even years after Google has dropped GWT...
Just like you still can program in QuickBasic or something.

GWT doesn't need anything from Google on the web to operate.

I will just keep using GWT if Google drops it, and see keep an eye on Dart.

Op donderdag 12 april 2012 10:00:15 UTC+2 schreef dominikz het volgende:

I've been for years with technologies like SAP or AS/400. Those are really annoying when you try to do something modern. But the thing that is good about them is that they never go away. I understand that Google needs to try new things (dart). But turning away from such a big project like GWT is stabbing yourself in the back.

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