Future of GWT Report 2012

7/28/2019 Future of GWT Report 2012

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The Future o GWT ReportStatistics o today and desires o tomorrow

2012


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2012 has brought many exciting eatures to GWT and it has also changed how

developed in the uture. While the product and the community are stronger than

have been asking what happens next with GWT?

Google announced in June that the development model or GWT will be made m

To acilitate the move and uture development, the GWT Steering Committee wa

Vaadin is proud to be a part o it together with Google, Sencha, RedHat and oth

input on what the users o GWT are doing with i t and what are their expectation

orward and asked.

The Future o GWT Survey is the result o the work o Vaadin, Ray Cromwell (Go

representative and acting GWT Steering Committee Chair), Artur Signell (VP o R

Representative), Mike Brock (Project Lead, JBoss Errai, RedHat Representative)

Chandler (Developer Advocate, Google), Daniel Kurka (developer o mGWT, GWT

Bhaskar Janakiraman (Google) - and you can see their comments and reactions

report.

With over 1300 respondents (1349 to be exact), who answered over 30 questio

that this is the most complete survey o the GWT community ever completed. W

thank all the survey respondents or their time and honesty, and look orward to

on the data!

Joonas Lehtinen CEO Vaadin

Let thecommunityguide theway
https://vaadin.com/press/2012-06-29-vaadin-to-support-google-web-toolkit-gwt-developmenthttps://vaadin.com/press/2012-06-29-vaadin-to-support-google-web-toolkit-gwt-development


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1.

Learn who, where and how GWT is used today

1.1 All work and no p lay makes Duke a happy puppy1.2 Your average GWT team

1.3 GWT is rom Europe, right?

1.4 Look at the size o those apps!

1.5 How do people measure app size?

1.6 Going mobile

1.7 Technologies or mobile development

1.8 Java > XML >> Designer

1.9 Model View Presenter

1.10 Crash test dummies

1.11 Extensions everywhere

1.12 Use o JavaScript

1.13 Backend communication

Contents

2.

Take a crash course on the strengths and

weaknesses o GWT

2.1 Feeling productive?

2.2 We do RTFM

2.3 Welcome to the dark side o GWT

2.4 Read while compiling

2.5 Are you a dev or super dev?

2.6 For the love o GWT

2.7 Latest is the greatest

2.8 Does it bug you?

3.

Where should GWT be h

3.1 GWT is doomed - or is 3.2 Where is the competitio

3.3 Joining orces

3.4 Your wishlist

3.5 Browsers to support in

Conclusions

About the survey


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Section 1:

Learn who, where and howGWT is used today


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Game

Other

1%

7%

Content-rich website

Portlet

11%

1.5%

Business application

80%

1.1 All work and no play makes Duke a happy puppy

As might be expected GWT users are much more likely to be building business

games, but content-rich websites also make up or a signicant portion o usag

What you might not have expected, is that more applications are being built or

internal usage (35%). Even the publicly used applications are very business orien

customers.

How isGWT usedtoday?

I eel that the number o

portlets is surprisingly low,

unless they are included in

business applications.

This surprised me - The

number o people working on

paid applications is higher than

I expected.

The large number o apps

developed or public use show

that we need to pay a lot o

attention to security.

BhaskarArtur

Daniel

Public (paying users)

Public (ree or all users)

Internal use

46%

19%

35%


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1.2 Your average GWT team

The average team on a GWT

project is made up o just over 12

people. This is a combination o

Back End Developers, Front End

Developers, Designers, Testers,

Project/Product Managers, and

a ew others. We did not ask

respondents who those others

might be... perhaps this could be a

customer representative, someone

ocused on UX, or perhaps GWT

teams have ound a way to bring

the elusive Bigoot into a corporate

environment.

3.7Back End Developers

2.Teste

2F

1.3Project / Product Managers

Tester

2.5

1Other

0.9Designers


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1.3 GWT is rom Europe, right?

Wrong, but the community is very active there

Geographic dist

54% Europe

29% North America

9% Asia

5% South America

2% Australia

1% Arica


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>10M

2M - 10M

1M - 2M

501k - 1M

301k - 500k

101k - 300k

100K or less

1.4 Look at the size o those apps!

We asked our respondents to tell us about the largest

application they were building with GWT. The size o their

(uncompressed obuscated) JavaScript range rom 100k to

>10M, and the distribution is spread rather evenly across the

spectrum. GWT developers are clearly building some o the

largest client-side web applications in the world.

Size o the uncompressed obuscated JavaScript

One o the things that people

oten ask me when Im giving

talks is when should I use

GWT? Or when not to use

GWT?. My answer is kind o

borne out by what I see here:

GWT is the right tool or buildinglarge, maintainable applications.

JavaScript is quick and nimble.

But when the app gets large,

maintainability quickly alls o a

cli.

Mike

When dierent people

are working on the same

JavaScript code, you have to

keep up conventions that are

not enorced by a compiler >

this makes it dicult to scale

teams or maintain applicationsover time, whereas with GWT,

these conventions are enorced

by the compiler, making the

technology much easier to use,

grow, and maintain

Daniel

"GWT is the right tool large, maintainable ap

12%

22%

16%

16%

12%

12%

10%


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1.5 How do people measure app size?

We also asked what respondents thought would be the best way to

measure the size o their app to be able to ask correct questions in the

uture. It seems that Aggregate number o coees consumed by the team

who built it is a valid measure o application size.

Number o screens

14

510

10.1%20.1%

1120

21+

23.2%

46.6%


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1.6 Going mobile

GWT is a versatile technology that allows developers to create application UI or

desktop, tablet, and mobile consumption. As can be expected, over 98% o apps

support desktop browsers, but we ound it interesting that tablets had overtaken

phones (at least when it came to support rom GWT-based apps). In US, the number

o apps supporting tablets was as high as 46%, while it was just 34% in Europe.

What kind o devices does your app support?

98.1%

36.1%

Tablets

Desktopbrowsers

Others

2.1%


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1.8 Java > XML >> Designer

Coding Java by hand is still the most popular method o b

GWT projects. What surprised us was how popular UiBind

Now 59% o GWT developers are using XML to build their

On the other hand, GWT designer has not been able to ge

How UIs are built

1.7 Most popular technologies or mobile development with GWT

While you can develop mobile applications without any additional technologies in

GWT, there are many rameworks around to help you. mGWT and PhoneGap are

much more widely used than any others. Out o the people who use some tech-

nologies or tool or using some tool, these two are used by 42% and 55% respec-

tively. Most o the ones using PhoneGap also use GWT-phonegap. While 30% o

people chose Other, we ailed to nd a trend there. People are building apps and

custom rameworks on top core GWT as well as using technologies not related to

GWT or building their mobile UIs.

mGWT PhoneGap

(and/or GWT-phonegap)

Others

30%42% 55%


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1.9 Model-View-Presenter

Opinions are split on whether and

what kind o pattern one should

use to organize component ori-

ented UI. One o the most popular

patterns used is MVP and there are

quite a ew rameworks or GWT to

help use o the pattern.

GWT 2.4 Activities

& Places

Homegrown None

19%27% 27%

OtherGWT-Platorm GWT-MVP

7%10% 5%


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1.10 Crash test dummies

Two o every three respondents say that their apps are either tested man-

ually or not tested at all. It is striking that only one third o developers use

automated tests or their GWT apps. The most popular tools used today

or testing GWT apps are Selenium and GWTTestCase.

Manual testing Selenium GWTTestCase Im not testing my UI Other

13%48% 19% 10% 8%

Its surprising to see so much

manual testing. This should

be another area o ocus or

uture GWT releases support

or automated testing o GWT

apps.

Bhaskar Daniel

50% o the people doing

manual testing is not that great

since there are very good tools

out there or doing automated

tests, such as Jucikito.


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1.11 Extensions everywhere

People are using a lot o extensions

with GWT. Here are the key areas

where extensions are used most.

Obviously, respondents were able

to choose multiple areas where they

use extensions, so results do not

add up to 100%.

Data access

(like GWT-rpc, GWT-dispatch)

UI unctionality

(like GWT-dnd, GWT-x)

Application structure

(like gin, GWT-presenter)

Access to

(like Goo

GWT-bo

Ot

(please

Data handling

(like gilead)

Application unctionality

(like GWT-platorm)

Dont use any

extensions

23

13

26%42% 35%

6%15% 19%


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1.12 Use o JavaScript 1.13 Backend communication

Daniel

Using big chunks o JavaScript in a GWT application is

technically possible, but it also has a downside: the GWT

Compiler can not optimize those parts o a project. So you

should always ask yoursel i their isnt an equal implementation

in Java (GWTQuery instead o JQuery) that could be used instead

or i rewriting something rom scratch might be an option.

Not surprising to see GWT RPC

winning given how easy it is to

use with existing Java code.

Ray

However, Us

mobile phon

is not such a

client and se

to have the s

With apps in

in control o t

so requesta

are way bett

situation.


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Section 2:

Take a crash courseon the strengths and weaknesses

o GWT


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2.1 Feeling productive?

Normally, when Im asked to talk about my eelings, I suer fashbacks to 7th gr

on one side o the room, and all the girls on the other... my eyes begin to dart ro

get clammy and sweaty... Its not pretty. When we asked our respondents or th

GWT, Im pleased to report that everyone was much more positive! 60.39% o r

Very or Extremely productive when using GWT - as opposed to the 8.48% w

productive at all.

The Strengthsand Weaknesseso GWT

60.39% o respondents reported eelingVery or Extremely productive when using GWT

How productive respondents eel using GWT


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2.2 We do RTFM

One o the key elements o the productivity or a ramework is how well it is documented.

Nothing kills productivity like endless guessing and using sources as the documentation.

How good is the documentation


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2.3 Welcome to the dark

side o GWT

You thought there were no dark painul

secrets? Every technology has them.

When someone claims a technology

to be perect, take that with a grain o

salt: reality distortion elds are known

to exist in this business.

To discover pain points, we asked

people to name the name the top two

worst eatures o GWT. Conveniently,

this gives us a list o things that could,

should, must and eventually will be

improved.

Ability to fnd

and fx bugs ast

6%

Application Speed

(at runtime,

not compile time)

Widgets

(not enough good quality

widgets available)

Compile Time

Development tools

in the ecosystem

Extensions

(not enough good quality

extensions available)

5%

49% 34%

Dev-mode

reresh time

27%

Styling o the

application / applicat

appearance

18%

9%

Code size

8%8%

Worst eatures o GWT


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2.4 Read while Compiling

The compile time is the #1 pain point or GWT developers. Fortunately we

asked a couple o questions about it and learned the reason. Because

GWT really shines on building large apps, guess what - people build really

large apps with it. And they take a while to compile.

Compilation time correlation to size o the (uncompressed

30 min5%

17%

48%

31%

2%

6%

29%

63%

3%

10%

42%

46%

1%

9%

54%

36%

3%

11%

57%

29%

Ray

There are three phases o compile time: Precompilation, Optimization

o Permutations, and Linking. Obviously, the second phase can grow

proportional to the number o permutations. At Google, we shard out

GWT permutations to a cluster o machines, sometimes hundreds, to

speed up compile.

While the general tools to do this are available in the GWT SDK, no

one has made an easy to use rontend or them. Some o the Cloud

vendors or IDE vendors who ship continuous build products could be

helpul in this regard by oering easy to use management solutions or

build clustering.

In general, giving more memory to the compiler (-Xmx4g), using SSD

drives, aster CPUs, will speed up the compile.

We are working on several ideas right now to speed up the compiler or

the next version o GWT.


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2.5 Are you a dev or a super dev?

The key to minimizing compilation time in the project is skipping compilation in the rst place. GWT includes an

amazing dev mode that allows running a GWT app on the JVM instead o compiling it to JavaScript. This should

mostly eliminate compilations rom the make a change -see what it looks -cycle.

With the newly released GWT 2.5, the next generation o dev mode is included. Naturally i t is called super dev

mode. Though it is still marked as experimental, over 10% o our respondents have already started using it

and enjoy the benets o dev mode without cumbersome browser plugins or browser-JVM bridge slowing the

application down.

Updating the dev mode plugins has be

years since browser vendors started to

browsers, breaking our development p

With super devmode we are no longer

There is a new emerging standard or

source maps that will eventually be s

It allows any language that is compiled

bidirectional mapping between the sou

GWT this means that you can directly

Going orward this should be the way t

development (including mobile) withou

When we started the SuperDevMode p

speed up compilation dramatically, but

it. How much delay could a developer

becoming annoyed? For smaller apps,medium sized apps it turns out 10 sec

varies depending on the amount o GW

more UIBinder, I18N, GWT RPC, and o

working on speeding up SuperDevMod

or all applications.

In which mode are you?


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2.6 For the love o GWT

What are the strong points where GWT really shines? We asked everyone to name two o their avorite eatures. Although compilation with GWT takes time, th

time by magically making your application cross browser compatible and well optimized without the need to ne-tune JavaScript by hand.

Cross browser

compatibility

(no messing with

JavaScript)

Development tools

in the ecosystem

Getting started with

GWT is easy

Ability to fnd

and fx bugs ast

Application Speed

(at runtime)

Usability

Modularity

Widgets (good quality

widgets available)

ExtDev-mode

reresh time

8% 8% 7%8%

19% 15%60% 25% 21%

Best eatures o GWT


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2.7 Latest is the greatest

How up to date are most people when it comes to GWT? Well, as it

turns out, most teams are using a version o GWT that is barely a year

old and over 84% o respondents are using GWT 2.4 or newer. One

ourth o the users have already upgraded to 2.5 that was released just

a month ago on October 26th. Thats a pretty good sign o a healthy,

up-to-date community.

2.8 Does it bug you?

When we asked i people have reported bugs in the past, its not surpris

olks havent. Whether that means that theyve never encountered a bu

it is let open to your own interpretation, but just in case its the latter, th

best place to report bugs in GWT.

Version o GWT used today Have you reported bugs in GWT?
http://code.google.com/p/google-web-toolkit/issues/listhttp://code.google.com/p/google-web-toolkit/issues/list


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Section 3:

Where should GWT be heading?


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3.1 GWT is doomed - or is it?

This is what we have been hearing rom the doomsday prophets o the

blogosphere since the dawn o Dart. While predicting the uture is hard,

dynamics o an open source project are somewhat more predictable. In

most cases, i there is a strong developer community that wants to use

some technology, it will - and the technology will thrive. Especially i the

technology happens to be already established and widely in production

use in huge business apps by top companies.

So we asked a pivotal question - I you were going to start a new project

that had a UI component, would you include GWT in i t? and heard

blazing 89% o the people say hell yeah. Well, it was actually just a polite

Yes, but with that percentage one is allowed to add superlatives, right?

89% o

respondentswould useGWT ontheir nextproject

Bhaskar

Google has large GWT apps,

several o them exceeding 1

million lines o source code,

many o them under active

development. We have a keen

interest in making sure GWT

stays healthy. As part o thesteering committee, we plan to

continue to improve GWT and

make it even better.

Would you use GWT on your next project?


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3.2 Where is the competition?

Another take to the question o using GWT in the next project would be: i not, what

then? So we asked about the other rameworks people could consider using.

Dart SmartGWT

JSF Play! Other languages that

compile to JavaScript

JavaScript + REST

ExtGWT/GXT SpringMVC Vaadin

Errai ZK

8% 4%

19% 17%

16% 16% 16%

38%

29% 28% 26%


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I'm glad to see, as evide

GWT community is alive

that they have stuck with

period. As GWT transitio

source context, I hope w

the project and also prov

the community with time

better.

3.3 Joining orces

In June this year, Google announced that it would open control over GWT to a steering committee, in hopes that it

would blossom as Eclipse did ater IBM relinquished control over the open source tools project.

We asked the community what they thought would happen to GWT now, under its new stewards, and although

a large group think that its too early to tell, 36% think that GWT will get even better and 38% think that GWT will

continue or a long time. Very ew people think that GWT is dead (4%), or that GWT will die once Dart takes o

(8%) -- so overall, the uture looks bright or companies considering urther use o Google Web Toolkit.

GWT will die o

Dart takes o

Too early to tell GWT will get even

better

The new stewards will

succeed in making

GWT prosper

Everything will

continue as beore

8%18% 12%50%

GWT will continue

or a long time

Once youve got 100k+ lines o

code, you dont change overnight

38% 36%

Prediction on what happens now that a steering committee is beginning to lead the project
http://www.techworld.com.au/article/429211/google_hands_over_control_google_web_toolkit_steering_committee/http://www.techworld.com.au/article/429211/google_hands_over_control_google_web_toolkit_steering_committee/http://www.techworld.com.au/article/429211/google_hands_over_control_google_web_toolkit_steering_committee/http://www.techworld.com.au/article/429211/google_hands_over_control_google_web_toolkit_steering_committee/


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3.4 Your wishlist

In that light, we wanted to help guide uture development, so we asked people to share their thoughts about

the problems they are acing with GWT, missing eatures and extensions as well as their thoughts or the uture

killer eatures o GWT 3. And we got what we asked or - even more than we asked or! In act, we got so many

suggestions that it is virtually impossible to list them in this report on a page, two or even ten.

So instead o that, we decided to post the ull wishlist o online.

Just go tovaadin.com/gwt/report-2012/wishlistto see it all, contribute your thoughtsand vote the best ideas.

Mike

I think its interesting that

GWT's biggest strength (large,

maintainable applications) turns

out to be its biggest weakness

(compile times). It seems to

me that a big priority or the

SC and the GWT community

in general, should be the

amelioration o the compile-

time problem.

Mike

The most important missing

eature in GWT, rom my

perspective in my selsh

disposition as the Errai lead,

is the lack o a good AST

transormation API in the GWT

generator ramework.

Artur

GWT currently ignores the

server side and how data is

handled there, even though it

is a eature o all applications.

It would be great to see

improvements in this part.

Daniel

What I would like to see is in

GWT is a CSS3 Parser, some

more optimizations on CSS,

reducing bolierplate with easier

data binding, having great

mobile support in gwt, more

great looking widgets
https://vaadin.com/gwt/report-2012/wishlisthttps://vaadin.com/gwt/report-2012/wishlist


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Browsers developers expect to support in 2013

3.5 Browsers to support in 2012

IE 6/7 Saari Opera IE 8

6/7

14% 18% 36% 54

Chrome9 10

IE 9 IE 10 Fireo

79% 80% 94% 94


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With over 20 pages o data, charts, stats, and commentary rom some o the most well-respected olks in the world o GWT, wed like to think that this

report is the most complete survey o the GWT community to date. Weve looked at everything rom the composition o GWT teams to the worst eatures

o GWT to predictions or the uture but the one thing that stands out most about the Future o GWT is this: Now that the codebase or GWT is open or

contributions, The Future o GWT is really in your hands, the hands o the community.

Heres how you can get involved:

Get your hands on the code at the GWT Repository

https://gwt.googlesource.com/gwt/

Follow the conversation o the Steering Committee

https://groups.google.com/orum/#!orum/gwt-steering

Report a Bug

http://code.google.com/p/google-web-toolkit/issues/list

Gerrit Votinghttps://gwt-review.googlesource.com/

Share this report!

https://vaadin.com/gwt/report-2012

Conclusions
https://gwt.googlesource.com/gwt/https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/gwt-steeringhttp://code.google.com/p/google-web-toolkit/issues/listhttps://gwt-review.googlesource.com/https://vaadin.com/gwt/report-2012https://vaadin.com/gwt/report-2012https://gwt-review.googlesource.com/http://code.google.com/p/google-web-toolkit/issues/listhttps://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/gwt-steeringhttps://gwt.googlesource.com/gwt/


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Experience with GWT

About the survey

This survey has been created through the work o Vaadin, with the support and contributions o the GWT Steering Committee and GWT-minded

individuals, most notably: Ray Cromwell (Google representative and acting GWT Steering Committee Chair), Artur Signell (VP o R&D, Vaadin

Representative), Mike Brock (Project Lead, JBoss Errai, RedHat Representative), David Chandler (Developer Advocate, Google), Daniel Kurka (developer

o mgwt, gwt-phonegap), Bhaskar Janakiraman (Google), Michael Vogt (Vaadin), David Booth, and Joonas Lehtinen (CEO, Vaadin).

We humbly recognize that there may be problems with some o our data, due to the sample size (n = 1349) and sel-selecting nature o our respondents.

None o our respondents were required to answer any question (no questions were mandatory), nor were they required to provide contact inormation.

That being said, wed like to graciously thank those who contributed their time and experiences into our 40+ question survey - and we look orward tocreating a similar report next year, to track the changes that happen over the next 365 days.

I youre curious, heres a little ino about our respondents:

Job roles o the respondents


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thinking o U and

Psssst!Did you know that Vaadin oerscommercial support and proessionalservicesor GWT?
https://vaadin.com/serviceshttps://vaadin.com/serviceshttps://vaadin.com/serviceshttps://vaadin.com/services

Documents

Future of GWT Report 2012