2009-12-09

GWT 2.0 released, HTML drawbacks as new feature


Few minutes ago I read about release of GWT 2.0. It's great new release, with many useful features. Except one: UiBinder. HTML and XML both have their problem - they are page-oriented. You can't just replace some widget as long as it's Widget subclass. You need to repaint all page if you want to layout it in some other manner. GWT allowed you to avoid those drawbacks, providing you with great feature-rich component-based framework. You could do everything in plain Java, and as for me it's big advantage, because average quality of GWT project were relatively high (you at least need to know Java, and maybe some component-based framework like Swing, right?). And now any novice HTML coder can feel something native and ugly using GWT, lowering average code quality and writing another crappy application with cute HTML-like interface. Impossible to debug, impossible to apply any Java techniques, and even making harder to use version control system (I hope you noticed that modern DIFF algorithms are not very good with XML?).

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