Google Web Toolkit

So, I have this huge to-do list this summer, and recently added writing some AJAX applications to the list.

Now, I like the way that the AJAX techniques allow web pages to be more interactive, stateful, etc. But I wasn't at all looking forward to fiddling around with Javascript on the client. Javascript has evolved far beyond its original purposes, and isn't that fun to use for a large application. So I'd been procrastinating at starting the AJAX applications.

Luckily, I procrastinated long enough for Google to release their Google Web Toolkit. The GWT is basically a framework that makes writing the client side of an AJAX application far easier than it previously was. Instead of fiddling with Javascript, which varies from browser to browser, you write the client in Java. Once you've written and debugged it in Java, you run the client code through the GWT compiler, which take the Java code and spits out Javascript.

What's even better is that the GWT provides a bunch of user interface widgets that would have taken me years to get right working in Javascript. So now, in my summer AJAX projects, I can focus on the application itself, and not worry about fiddling my summer away figuring out user interfaces in Javascript.

Life is good!