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Should I learn Google Web Toolkit?
You’re assuming Apple, Amazon and Microsoft’s programming platforms for web services aren’t
the future.
You should know we can write off Microsoft’s platform. They’ve been around forever.
Web development may be the future, but it may not be with Google. Amazon is making a
killing in the web services, while Apple’s iTunes and App Store are the industry model.
Google invented its own programming language designed to simplify and standardize syntax
and operations.
Go is designed to handle concurrent operations and lots of little requests fast. In fact,
Go is probably the language they will push developers to use.
You don’t have to use Go to use Google Web Toolkit.
Yeah, but you know they’ll bias you toward using that the way they give Google owned
content like Google books preference in their search results.
Google Web Toolkit isn’t limited to using Google’s web hosting and cloud servers.
You can use it as a web development platform, like Adobe Flex.
Yes, you can create web interfaces without knowing much HTML, CSS or JavaScript.
You do, though, have to know Java.
Java is a standard programming language. No matter which web development platform you
want to use, you should know Java.
I’ve heard people complain about Java in GWT.
That’s because the Google Web Toolkit converts darn near everything into Java, whether it
translates well or not.
You want everything to be in the same language.
That reminds me – its translation of HTML into Java is worse than those Chinese to English
signs that say “Translation error!” at the airport.
Google has some great widget libraries to make user interface functionality easier even
if you don’t know Java.
What’s wrong with jQueryUI or SproutCore? There are other widget libraries, and in fact,
they’re bigger than Google’s.
That’s quite an accomplishment.
You can learn GWT if you plan on deploying desktop applications remotely, but it is so
raw that it would be a killer diet if you tried to live off it.