Why might gwt be getting more popular?

Question

I've noticed a dramatic increase in GWT popularity during the past 6 months. More evidence can be seen here:

http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=gwt&l=

Can someone explain the cause?

Answer 1

I think there are basically three reasons for this:

1. Organic Growth - Have you ever used GWT? I don't know about most people, but for me, none of the marketing material on the GWT site was very convincing. Then I ran into a little small personal project that required integration with Google maps and app engine. I decided to try GWT since the tools made it so easy. Using it once, even for an extremely modest project has completely changed my mind. I suspect this means there has been a lot of word of mouth propagation of the framework over the past 6 months.
2. Maturity - The early versions weren't used by Google all that much (little dogfooding) and were a bit rough around the edges. The latest releases seem to have solved most of the growing pain issues (though compile times are still too high, imo) and have turned it into a solid, usable framework.
3. Styling - They've started including a set of default skins. I think this has helped their demos to look quite a bit more impressive for recent releases, whereas some people were confused in the past by the "no-styling out of the box" approach that the project had taken.

I'd be really shocked if any of these apply outside of Java shops, though. I haven't seen GWT making inroads into non-Java environments at all, and I think their current direction makes non-Java success even more unlikely.

Answer 2

Certainly there's a number of people too afraid or lazy (or whatever) to learn something different from what they're used to, so that's definitely a factor. If Java developers are anything, it's lazy, and cheap. GWT wins on those points over a lot of other RIA stuff. People that know Java and Swing don't want to learn JavaScript, C# (Silverlight), ActionScript (Flex), or JavaFX (that thing still alive?), this would require some sort of effort on their part.

It also has the zombie-like acceptance of anything Google touches. (Although personally I much prefer that than anything Apple touches, at least Google respects developer choice.)

Answer 3

i think the recent release of GAE, meaning that GWT RPC can be used for free(*), would've helped.

(*) where as before, you wouldnt be able to host a GWT app that uses RPC unless you had access to a java servlet container (or used one of the bridging libraries to run RPC off a non-java server).

Answer 4

I would say jsight's answer is a pretty good explanation.

I have looked at Flex, Rails and GWT. All three inhabit the same space, with Flex producing Flash RIAs and GWT and Rails doing the same for HTML.

Having worked with Flex, there is a lot to like but some serious niggling problems, the main one for me being the difficulty integrating HTML into a Flex app - it's no trivial task and there are few projects that can avoid this.

GWT on the other hand is daunting initially because it's Java-based and does not come with the same kind of drag and drop editor that Flex provides in Flex Builder.

But GWT Designer (by Instantiations) is a pretty good equivalent to Flex Builder in the GWT world and for a Java programmer with Swing skills, the architecture of GWT doesn't take much figuring out.

Not to mention the sheer number of Java programmers around who can pitch GWT to their managers as a simple add-on their existing Java toolset.

Plus the Google brand doesn't hurt.

In terms of sellability within the enterprise, a Java tool is always going to be an easier sell than Actionscript or Ruby on Rails. It's hard to say for sure where things are headed but I would expect to see continued growth for all three. Everyone wants RIA these days.

Answer 5

I propose the Matt Raible Effect. See: http://raibledesigns.com/rd/entry/ajax_framework_analysis_results

Seriously I think the number of people that base technology stack decision on this guy's blog is significant.