Now with GWT 2, what are the advantages over wicket and likewise?

Question

Apart from the argument of Wicket's simplicity (that is, Wicket is a simpler system IMHO) and GWT's responsiveness in the client (GWT's client side state and JavaScript - potentially complex client side code) and GWT's greater potential for scaling, what is the argument for using GWT over Wicket?

Personally I've done a lot of Wicket development, but have only had a quick look at GWT a long time ago.

Answer 1

The advantages are, basically, that GWT is a tool to build javascript-based client, thus, it's best suited if you want a javascript-based client.

Wicket centers on the server, and while it makes it quite easy to embed javascript into stateless pages, server-side state handling is the more natural approach.

One must note that the architectures are very different.

With GWT, your architecture turns into client-server, a thick client on the browser, making calls to 'procedures' (services) to the server, sending and receiving data.

With Wicket (and other server-side-centric component frameworks, like JSF and Tapestry), the architecture is a more 'traditional' 3-layer one, and what is sent and received are pages or fragments of the pages, not pure data.

While you can certainly blend both to adapt to the other architecture, it simply wouldn't be very natural.

People tend to focus on 'which is easier to use' (which is completely subjective, depending on your background), or 'which is more beautiful and has more components', but one should not underestimate the architectural difference, which affects the approach you have to take to handle aspects like security and scalability.

Answer 2

I've been involved in a GWT based project for the past few months. I was, having been part of the Wicket development team for years, looking forward to a change, and expected a lot from GWT (which I've always touted as another great Java framework).

Honestly, I am disappointed when it comes to working with GWT. I feel - my whole team in fact - that productivity took a big hit. Theoretically GWT is great. But when you factor in the quirks and limitations of the framework, mediocre error reporting (particularly when it comes to serialization errors), the long compile times (anywhere between 3 - 10 minutes, and our project isn't even that big yet), the fact that when all is said and done, you still need to test for all browsers and find tweaks and workarounds, the fact that it produces a huge initial download (almost an MB, which we're cutting back gradually, but with a lot of effort), etc, etc, I feel Wicket is much easier and quicker to work with.

I don't hate working with GWT. It's still a lot better than most Java frameworks. It's just that I expected a lot more from working with it; I even expected it to be possibly nicer than Wicket. But in the end, it is just not imho. Hopefully GWT 2.0 will improve a lot of things, and hopefully some of the quirks of the Eclipse plugin will be straightened out soon too.

Answer 3

It's somewhat not fair to compare GWT with wicket (or likewise) since they are really coming from 2 different camps. The former is a framework for building JavaScript front-end applications while the latter is a classic Java web application framework.

So the points below are not as much as GWT vs. wicket but rather general list that was compiled when we decided to use GWT for advanced JavaScript/AJAX web application:

• hides drawbacks of JavaScript and cross-browser support by allowing to develop in Java and compiling to browser-specific flavor of JavaScript automatically (this is not completely true due to The Law of Leaky Abstractions but it's a major reason why GWT was created in first place - see Reveling in Constraints);
• Java is preferred by many Java developers when it gets down to advanced JavaScript/AJAX UI;
• Java development environment and tools are fully supported: Eclipse plugin, debugger, refactoring, hosted mode in Eclipse;
• JUnit tests are supported both with mock objects and in hosted mode;
• Clean integration with Java back-end (GWT-RPC);
• Relatively rich set of UI widgets with uniform look and feel;
• Availability of third-party widgets, frameworks, patterns, and examples (still limited and with a long wish list);
• Google support drives both wider acceptance/popularity and rapid advancement of the framework;
• maturing framework with 1.6+ and forthcoming 2.0 releases: (eventbus, event handlers, GUI architecture with MVP pattern, compiler optimization, etc.).