>> I think there is. This doesn't look like the site of a failing project: https://developers.google.com/web-toolkit/ https://developers.google.com/web-toolkit/

>> I think there is. This doesn't look like the site of a failing project: https://developers.google.com/web-toolkit/ https://developers.google.com/web-toolkit/ It's not that the project is about to fail, it's that even with that I still don't see a future. The project is mostly driven by the now-disinterested Google and a bunch of large companies with huge and different GWT-based frameworks (SmartGWT, Vaadin, Sencha GXT). The latter players only have an interest in keeping the core of GWT alive, not in advancing the regular GWT experience. Other players are small and on the whole don't seem to be contributing in promising ways (in my opinion). For example, the GWT-P framework, despite some good ideas, is quite verbose and provides false time savings. >> I can change things in the client or server code, save and see the results instantly. I work on a medium-sized code base (compared to some enterprise code I used to work on in the past). I am using 1-yr-old top-of-the-line MBP with best-available SSD and let's just say we disagree on the definition of the term instantly. I experience anywhere from 15 to 30 second waits on refreshes (that trigger recompilation), plus server restarts if server-side hot code deploy fails. That's far from instant. >>>> it's inexcusable for a 2012-era framework to not have a quality form validation library available. >> http://code.google.com/p/gwt-validation/ http://code.google.com/p/gwt-validation/ I disagree. Have you actually used that library? All it does is data validation. That's not my problem. My problem is tying that into forms and the UI. Compare that to http://docs.jquery.com/Plugins/Validation http://docs.jquery.com/Plugins/Validation, compare that to validation provided in SmartGWT's forms. Have you written forms that had to be validated? GWT CellTables that had to have contents be validated? There is another GWT validation library out there that helps with forms/tying into GWT controls, but it's quite lackluster. >>>> The other downside of GWT is that it's written in verbose Java >> That is a huge, major win dude. Seriously. What else would we all program the web in? JavaScript? Java is verbose and you have to recognize that downside. I will often pay those costs of verbosity on the server-side in exchange for performance. Someone else here gave a good alternative perspective, but yeah, JavaScript. >>>> ...Java, with plenty of non-DRY stuff. >> DRY is a principle, you can repeat yourself or not in any language you choose. The problem with GWT, and this applies to the non-DRY comment, is that they did not aggressively go after eliminating that. They just said, "it's Java, things are just going to have to be verbose." C'mon, you wrote a Java-to-Javascript compiler for Pete's sake, surely you can put some talent into making the core development experience better! Especially in the face of competition like jQuery or Rails. Creating two files per page/view sucks (or 3 files with GWT-P, be warned), or coding up your views w/o UI binder, you end up coding the layout of the page in pure Java (verbose and far from directly relatable to the layout). I already mentioned the pain of doing GWT RPC calls in my previous comment. I could go on all day. Of course, DRY is a principle. Use it!