Re: Important videos from GWT Meet-up 2015

Thanks for the link .

To those who've generously uploaded the videos: any possibility of also uploading the slides? The technical presentations are pretty much useless w/o the slides.

TIA,
jec

On Friday, June 12, 2015 at 2:21:49 AM UTC-7, Phineas Gage wrote:

I thought I'd share this link to a series of important videos from the recent GWT Meet-up 2015, which was posted on G+ and in the GWT Contributors group:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1yReUCGwGvrqscLu1EAyYRPrr0ceEHLE

Summary:

For anyone who wasn't already aware, there are seismic changes coming for GWT. Basically, gwt-user and everything in it will be gradually mothballed, so widgets, GWT-RPC, UiBinder, CssResource, etc. While we're at it, the GWT compiler will probably go too. If the plan stays as presented, everything is going, sooner or later. It looks as though a much simpler and faster Java to JS transpiler is proposed, maybe under a different project name, with optimizations handled by Closure. I welcome corrections if I've got something wrong here.

Editorial:

Having used GWT for a number of years, I think this is a massive but needed change. It looks like a great direction, that maybe could have been taken even sooner. But personally, I now can't see using GWT for new projects until it appears in its new form. We're in a kind of purgatory now where anything you write in GWT may not be easy to maintain, but the new vision is currently just a hope for the future.

As for myself, since I've got a project in its early stages, I'll probably be porting everything I have to JavaScript, until I can count on a stable Java to JS transpiler. At that point, I can decide to move some of the code back to Java, if it's not too painful and the benefits to doing so are clear. At the same time, even with years of Java experience, I have to ask myself, why Java? If it's a better language that compiles to JavaScript that we want, there are many: Dart is coming along, and there are more options than there were before. It's speculation to say what an open source Swift will mean, but the external forces affecting these options can play themselves out while JavaScript will likely continue to be stable for years to come.

So rather than drag it out, I'd like to see these changes happen ASAP. As it's sometimes said, "if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging." I believe that if a stable and fast Java to JS transpiler were released, the community would chip in to help complete JRE emulation or other needed projects, and I'm glad to hear that much of the GWT team is being diverted to compiler work.

Thanks to the GWT team for sharing these plans with the community!

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