Sunday, January 24, 2021

Re: Our 10+ year journey with GWT (+ job opening)

Hi Peter,

That's a very good insight. Thanks for sharing.

I do not have a +10 years product in GWT yet (6+)  but I have +10 overall experience. What looked like a game changer for me was the new jsinterop some years ago.

I have created some bindings (some good enough, some not so good, some awful) to the underlying user facing javascript libraries. What I am missing is a clear way to contribute these bindings in a more centralized way.

I asked here one or two times but IIRC the answer was there should be an automatic way to import js libraries. Maybe through DefinitelyTyped typescript https://github.com/DefinitelyTyped/DefinitelyTyped definitions? not sure if it is even possible.

I am not aware of such a way or at least a roadmap. Do you think that with the WASM target the jsinterop binidings will be more automatic / easier / less manual?

Any further insight will be much appreciated.

 Vassilis


On Sun, Jan 24, 2021 at 7:14 AM Peter Donald <peter@realityforge.org> wrote:
FWIW - about 3 years ago we started to rewrite a suite of apps built using a collection of technologies from AWT/SWING Desktop apps, jruby/rails, jsp/jsf, gwt applications and some of the suite has been in operation since 2001 (with the build starting in 1999). We decided to go to Typescript+Mobx+React+GraphQL as the core frontend tech stack after a reasonable evaluation period but after about 12 months of development ... as we added tooling to support the scope of the projects (i.e. closure compiler and extensive build tooling) we found that the development experience still did not comparable to GWT. 

Js has so many easily accessible libraries that really are where all the interesting ideas are being explored but getting them production ready was such a PITA and the development turnaround time at the size we were working with was on par with equivalent gwt sized apps or worse. Small, quick prototypes are so much faster when you can lean on the js ecosystem but once you need to get development working smoothly with lots of not necessarily great frontend developers and java is so much nicer. 

We ended up wrapping react in java, wrote our own mobx-like library. Once we switch to GWT3/J2CL (*and have multiline strings in java!) then I can't imagine there is much in the js ecosystem that we will miss sans the variety of libraries.

While the JS frameworks are slowing down, I would expect a cambrian explosion to occur when wasm comes of age which is soon I hope. The J2CL are already working towards that target so I hope we can largely piggy back on their work but keep with the same GWT/j2cl codebase we work with now for at least another 15 odd years.

On Thu, Jan 21, 2021 at 3:14 AM David Nouls <david.nouls@gmail.com> wrote:
That is actually a good point indeed. We also have very old tech in production including some ALGOL.

I do have the impression that the JS Frameworks race has been slowing down a bit. Sure there will always be some new ideas, but the big frameworks are there for quite some.

At least with GWT/Java it is rather easy to maintain! GWT does not change much, sometimes that is an advantage.
On 20 Jan 2021, 16:48 +0100, lofid...@gmail.com <lofidewanto@gmail.com>, wrote:
IMHO that's the problem with frameworks / languages. If they are "strong enough" they won't be gone... I don't think that TypeScript / Vue.js / React / Angular etc. will be vanished. They will stay forever just like COBOL and other technologies like Borland / Embarcadero Delphi Object Pascal. My comment above was a joke, because I don't know what will happen in 10 years. There will be another hot things. Maybe we move completely on the native client development instead of Web browser? But who knows...

So at the end of the day the devs need to maintain apps with the zoo of frameworks and languages. 

Scary if you see this history of web frameworks: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mraible/history-of-web-frameworks-timeline/master/history-of-web-frameworks-timeline.png

I think, it's time that the development of apps / Web apps should go higher in the abstraction level to be technology / framework independent. PIM (Platform Independent Model) anyone?  😉

BTW.: I still have JSPs in production. Also COBOL 😅

Cheers,
Lofi
t.br...@gmail.com schrieb am Mittwoch, 20. Januar 2021 um 14:36:30 UTC+1:
Why did you bet on GWT 10 years ago and wouldn't bet on TypeScript nowadays?
(fwiw, TypeScript is already 8 years old; Vue.js is 6 years old, React is 7)

On Tuesday, January 19, 2021 at 5:26:38 PM UTC+1 lofid...@gmail.com wrote:
@swas...

<quote>
Yes, almost 10 years for me too and production application  running for 3 years.
GWT 2.6.1 + Eclipse 4.8.  Tomcat8 + MySQL5.7  + Java8 + JasperReport
my next 10 years plan is  move to TypeScript + VueJS.
</quote>

After 10 years, will we still be able to see TypeScript + VueJS? 😂

Cheers,
Lofi
RobW schrieb am Dienstag, 19. Januar 2021 um 15:29:42 UTC+1:
Our web front end is on 15 years with GWT as of this year, and we're expecting 5 more with luck. So we'll hit the 20 year mark if all goes well

On Tuesday, 19 January 2021 at 10:46:44 UTC aka...@gmail.com wrote:
I wonder if that will actually last for the next 10 years.

On Tuesday, January 19, 2021 at 10:04:19 AM UTC+2 swas...@gmail.com wrote:
Yes, almost 10 years for me too and production application  running for 3 years.
GWT 2.6.1 + Eclipse 4.8.  Tomcat8 + MySQL5.7  + Java8 + JasperReport
my next 10 years plan is  move to TypeScript + VueJS.
On Monday, 4 January 2021 at 23:37:53 UTC+7 Alexander Bertram wrote:
Nice to hear from everyone!

Here's to the next ten years :-)

Best wishes for 2021,
Alex

On Tuesday, December 22, 2020 at 10:22:08 AM UTC+1 Segun Razaq Sobulo wrote:

I've been using GWT for 7+ years (with appengine java backends) and actively looking for a job. I'll push my resume.

Thanks
On Monday, 21 December 2020 at 15:24:19 UTC+1 aka...@gmail.com wrote:
We are in times where working remotly id actually a good option.

On Monday, December 21, 2020 at 4:19:13 PM UTC+2 David Nouls wrote:
Hi Alex,

Same story here. I have been working with GWT since it first came out. For our current project we again opted for GWT because we share a lot of code between client and server and productivity is high.

I'm not available at the moment (maybe end of next year)… but living in Belgium/Leuven I don't think that is doable. Relocation is not an option. Good luck finding people, there are not a lot on the market.

Groeten,
David
On 20 Dec 2020, 16:16 +0100, 'Alexander Bertram' via GWT Users <google-we...@googlegroups.com>, wrote:

Dear all, 

I hope this email isn't too off-topic, but I wanted to share an opening for a job on our team with a large GWT component.


The first version of our product, ActivityInfo, a data collection and analysis platform for humanitarian relief, was built with GWT, GXT and Google Gears in 2009 and seriously would not have been possible without GWT. 

In 2018, nearly 10 years later, we looked at the amazing js ecosystem and considered moving to Typescript or Elm.

Instead, we decided to keep the bits that we loved about GWT: the typesafety, code-reuse with the server, i18n, code splitting, linkers, and the amazing compiler, and add SCSS for styles and our own port of Preact + rxJava-like reactivity for dom manipulation using Elemental2.

Three years after the start of ActivityInfo 4.0 we couldn't be happier with the choice, and are more productive than ever. 

If you're an experienced GWT developer that would enjoy the challenge of a working on a modern GWT codebase, I hope you'll consider joining our team!


Best,
Alex

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Cheers,

Peter Donald

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Vassilis Virvilis

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