The problem I have with GWT is that fundamentally Javascript is a better language, warts and all, than Java.
But I also respect those who prefer a language which offers type safety. One which does not lay traps of unexpected coercion and unfathomably unusual truth tables. I respect a language which can guarantee and enforce immutability at compile time. I respect a language which has had a sensible packaging system from the outset. One which served as the foundation for many as an introduction to object-oriented programming. A language whose primary implementation is based upon a powerful, performant virtual machine, and one which has had excellent support for concurrent execution of programs and components thereof for nearly a decade. I respect a language whose implementations are not wildly divergent. I am fortunate enough to work with a language whose underlying implementation is flexible enough to host dozens of both static and dynamic languages - including JavaScript itself.
What I do not respect are blanket unqualified absolutist statements and fundamentalisms. I understand that you may have found yourself frustrated at points during which you've written Java in the past. I would like to hear about these, and understand them better. But I'd also encourage you to avoid such totalizing statements, as for a variety of reasons, many may have very good reasons for enjoying things you do not.
Java is not a bad language, but its limitations have led to a lot of bad engineering. Javascript is far from perfect, but its core elegance has led to increasingly sophisticated and increasingly powerful uses of the language. In another, say, 10 years the state of Java development will almost certainly continue the status quo of today, whereas the state of javascript development is likely to have considerably advanced.
> but its core elegance has led to increasingly
> sophisticated and increasingly powerful uses
> of the language
> whereas the state of javascript development
> is likely to have considerably advanced.
On the language evolution front: the http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=harmony:proposals features are very likely to be in the next edition, by end of 2013. Some are already implemented in Firefox.
http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=strawman:strawman contains the full laundry list of possible additions, but among those, http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=strawman:simple_modul... is worth calling out. The module system is likely to be a major feature of the next version of the standard.
JavaScript's standard stalled after ECMA-262 3rd Edition, but that was pretty much because of the IE monopoly and the death of Netscape. All web standards stalled, or went off to XML la-la land.
That was then (1999-2004). Since Firefox restarted browser competition in 2004; then with Safari, the iPhone, etc.; and since 2008 with Google Chrome, which clearly provoked major work in IE9; things are moving again, and standards bodies (still dysfunctional in some hard-to-fix ways) are more balanced than ever in terms vendor representation.
So yeah, the next ten years seem likely to be be different from the last ten.
Not only due to browser competition, but also from the Bell's Law device shift to always-connected, instant-on mobile and away from desktop, indicated above via "Safari, the iPhone, etc."
Some fear this shift means non-interoperable, siloed apps and closed app-stores will dominate, but my money is still on the Web. The Web can evolve to have better apps and stores too, provided browser and Web platform markets remain competitive.
http://kangax.github.com/es5-compat-table/
It does not fill some of the big gaps left in JS (no module system, that's coming in Harmony), but it helps and it got the standards committee back together (sans Adobe).
Uh, any web app? Gmail? Google Maps? The one I'm working on? Surely we don't need to make a list.
If JavaScript continues to advance at the lightning pace it's been advancing these past ten years we'll be in exactly the same spot we are now!
That's incorrect. The language didn't need to change much. The two things that have changed are so major they couldn't be majorer: (1) it took people 10 years to actually figure out what they had in JS; (2) the implementations needed to catch up. While 1 may be more or less done, 2 is still in full swing. This will enable further innovation. It's not even clear we need major changes to the language itself. I'd be much more excited if the VMs were opened up to apps.
JQuery and node.js alone are perfect examples.
It has been rare that Google has introduced some piece of technology to the world where, even if it first seemed to be some one-off oddity, was not part of some grander plan which had yet to emerge. Take GOOG411 as an example -- it was a cheap way to mileage on voice recognition tools for Android. Take Google Maps, Android, and GOOG411 all in isolation, and the company seems a bit nutty. But, once it became clear that they were all part of a strategy for location-based advertising, everything began to make sense.
I look at GWT, the Native Client project, and Web Printing as a couple of similar data points. Clearly, Google is positioned to come out ahead as the Windows desktop loses prominence. So, what might we infer about Google's intentions given the historical cohesiveness of its technology strategies coupled with the existence of these projects? The point of my post was not to argue the merits of GWT but to ask whether it is logical to presume Google's intent is to replace JavaScript as the sole means of programatic expression on the client.