Comment by Shai Almog on "Don't use GWT or Google Web Toolkit?"

Interesting. When we started Codename One we wrote the UI for the web interface in GWT. It was awesome to work with but it was hard getting the "native" stuff working. E.g. mixing in custom JavaScript and getting the CSS look and feel right. Eventually we moved to bootstrap for the UI and now use Codename Ones JavaScript port for the UI.

We use react on typescript in Lightrun and it's an absolute pain for me personally. But it does have the advantage of wide skill set in terms of hiring. That's basically what it comes down to. I wish technologies like GWT would get better PR and traction but I'm not sure how we can get there.

With the new GWT now mixing both echosystems -Java and JavaScript- have never been this easy, Now we can have the best of the two worlds without sacrificing anything, with how JsInterop has evolved and the elemental2 libraries and other alternatives that barrier has long gone.

Now in GWT are talking the browser API we can mix html native elements with our own developed custom element seamlessly, we use the browser native APIs.

We have tools that allows us to share lots of our code between backend and frontend, we have excellent type checking, we have strong contracts, and awesome IDEs.

In DominoKit we took one step further and decided to build a full modern stack that cover most of the areas for building a modern web application :

Domino-ui : github.com/DominoKit/domino-ui Very rich easy to use UI library with a good look and feel that uses html native elements and API.

Domino-jackson : github.com/DominoKit/domino-jackson JSON (de)serializers for Java objects that uses jackson style and annotations, The same mapper works on the browser and the JVM, and support a very wide set of Java data types.

Domino-rest : github.com/DominoKit/domino-rest Generate REST clients from jax-rs interfaces shared between frontend and backend.

Domino-history : github.com/DominoKit/domino-history Manipulate the browser URL with an easy to use API and listen to the URL changes, routing have been this easy.

Domino-aggregator : github.com/DominoKit/domino-aggregator Wait for different async tasks to complete before doing some action.

Domino-slf4j-logger github.com/DominoKit/domino-slf4j-logger slf4j logging right in the browser.

Domino-mvp : github.com/DominoKit/domino-mvp Light-weight but rich and comprehensive flexible MVP framework to control your application screens life-cycle

And if this is not enough, the community has a lot more to add, even Java itself is getting better and we are keeping up.

For the hiring part I think that is one point that need to solve, nowadays what we need is not a GWT expert, all you need is a java developer with little html and css knowledge, GWT is not just a compiler, just like TypeScript it is just the echo-system around it.

That's really impressive stuff you did there. I might try it in an upcoming project as I'm really dreading the react nonsense.

Is there a business model behind this or something you plan on launching?

The hiring portion isn't so much something I would say... I agree. But I hear that nonsense from people who have doubts about Codename One.

Thank you very much Shai Almong (@talktotheduck) for sharing your experience.

As Ahmad Ahmad K. Bawaneh said JsInterop and elemental2 libs make it possible to share and mixing Js and Java. Domino demonstrates this approach very good, also the framework VueGWT( vuegwt.github.io/vue-gwt) uses this mixin approach. But again I think it must be accessible to wide are of developers to test it more and more in different Use Cases. Frameworks like React are heavly used in daily dev as we can see articles on top news.

Thanks

Shai Almog Yes, We have big plans for this, we love open source and we will keep providing open source version of our tools, we are currently working on website and actually going through the official DominoKit company registration, we plan to extend and expand our tools and the features they provide.

Our goal is to be the #1 target for java developers in this area.

Ahmad K. Bawaneh congratulations and best of luck to you guys!

If you need to pick my brain feel free to write to me. I've done a lot of work in this field. Specifically open source, community building and trying to commercialize a free product. That's pretty hard, especially when you're dealing with entrenched competition and historic perception.

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