Question

Iam a great fan of javascript frameworks especially jQuery .I have always wanted to design sites like ‘plurk.com’ but i know that it needs very huge lines of javascript.so that shut me off.But since i came to know GWT , i really want to test it out and want to ask you if it makes our job easier to develop complex things than with the javascript or its frameworks .Which one would you prefer ?

Answer 1

Few things scare me like ‘generated Javascript’. The Law of Leaky Abstractions has got to be doubly true in these cases.

Writing effective cross-browser javascript is a tricky process of continuous refinement. Trying to decipher where some generated, obscured Javascript is going wrong is a major headache. It’s bad enough fixing bugs in the pure JS libraries.

To me, GWT is a trick aimed at allowing backend developers to write front-end, in-browser code. Unfortunately, the realities of modern web apps mean you just have to know Javascript and the DOM. Something’s going to break, and you’re going to need to know why.

I think you’re better off picking a good javascript library like jquery or prototype, and learning that well. Those libraries abstract away the sort of stuff that SHOULD be abstracted away and is unlikely to break in edge cases, like array operations and AJAX requests.