GWT (and me) Unveiled on The Server Side

I did a video interview with Eugene Ciurana of The Server Side web site. In the interview we talked about the benefits of GWT and a little about the contents of GWT in Action.

GWT in Action: TheServerSide Tech Brief

The posting as drummed up some lively conversation. Perhaps the best quote in the comments so far is, "GWT style programming is for cowards". I am not sure how using GWT makes me a coward, perhaps not writing code directly in assembler makes me a coward as well. As the immortal Popeye once said, "I am what I am".

YeeeeHaaaa! See Y'all at the Java Ranch!

This week GWT in Action is the featured book on the Java Ranch web site. Adam and I will be fielding questions about GWT in the HTML and JS forum for the next two days, and the Java Ranch will be giving out some free copies of the book.

The Java Ranch forum is quite a bit different them the GWT developers forum. Most of the questions revolve around the discussion of what GWT can do, how it compares to similar technologies, and what are its shortcomings. It is a lot of fun, and is letting Adam and I us spread the word about GWT to Java developers that aren't using it yet.

GWT announced as the new iPhone SDK

Perhaps the title of this entry is slightly misleading, but it comes close to the truth. In this entry I present a guy named Steve, and his announcement that gave me some insight to the future of web development.

First, let me provide some background information. In case you missed it, Apple held its World Wide Developers Conference last week, and as usual Steve Jobs stood up on the big stage to deliver the keynote address. The keynote is the highlight of WWDC, and even if you weren't there you could find out what Steve was talking about by watching the many real-time blog posts covering the presentation.

As part of the keynote Steve announced the SDK for the iPhone, as was rumored, but what Steve announced isn't what the attendees expected. Steve announced that the SDK for the iPhone is the rich Internet application. That's right, the new SDK is the same SDK that Web 2.0 developers have been working with for the past few years, including GWT. This is made possible because the iPhone uses the full Safari browser.

As most developers I would expect, I was a befuddled by the announcement. Big deal I thought, but then it hit me. What Steve announced was not just about the iPhone, it was about all computing devices. You don't need to have an SDK for your mobile device anymore, all you need is a capable browser, and an Internet connection. As a web developer I find this exciting, and I see a very good future for our industry.

Of course Steve Jobs is not omniscient, but the fact that he announced the SDK in the way he did is a huge step in what I believe is the right direction. The only tools we need for this to become a reality is free wifi everywhere (or something similar), the actual hardware devices, the maturation of rich Internet applications, and a little imagination. As web developers we have held up our part of this, building web applications that can compete with traditional desktop applications, and the latest hardware is getting close to where we need it as well. All we need to do now is wait for everywhere wifi and then many of us will be able to leave the laptop at home in favor of a pocket browser.

In summary, GWT + iPhone = the future of mobile computing.

GWT a Year Later

One year ago there was a post on the Ajaxian site that reviewed GWT, and the author was pretty harsh. I remember that it really bothered me and a few others, as you can see in the comments on that article.

Recently I was speaking with Dietrich Kappe of Ajaxian, and commented that I thought that review of GWT was a little unfair, especially since it was posted only a few days after GWT was released. Dietrich in turn offered Adam Tacy an I an opportunity to answer some of the questions raised by the original article as review of GWT one year later after its launch.

GWT a Year Later: Was it the correct level of abstraction?