Question

I already spent some time developing small projects with the GWT and I recently discovered Script#.
Now I am curious about how mature this toolkit is.
I am especially interested in the opinion of someone who tried both GWT and Sharp# and therefore is able to compare the two.

How mature is Script#?
Is it true that it is maintained by only one guy?
Where does it lack functionality when compared to the GWT?
Does it have advantages over the GWT?
Personal opinion on Sharp#?

Thanks for your time.

Answer 1

While this is a duplicate question, I think the answer in the previous question doesn’t touch on some important points with regards to GWT.

• GWT is a Java to Javascript compiler with a heavy emphasis on optimizing the generated Javascript beyond anything that’s possible to do by hand. The generated JS is also browser specific, so Webkit browsers don’t download IE hacks. The generated files are also cachable because the name is the md5 sum of the script contents, so you could cache it forever. This means a user only has to download the code once until it changes. Script#, from my quick skimming of the website, only seems to translate C# to Javascript.
• GWT offers advanced features like developer guided code splitting, ClientBundle for bundling resources and CssResource for conditional CSS, etc. Combined with UiBinder, developing a site that has 2 round trips for application start up is possible to do and not very hard. I don’t think Script# has any of this, and most JS libraries don’t either.
• GWT has dev mode for a JS like development environment (change code, refresh the browser, see the changes), I’m not sure if Script# has something like that.

I could keep going, but I think I’ll stop with those. When you combine this with the other answers, GWT is pretty compelling.