After the birth of Struts “framework” became hot buzz word in the software development industry. Now almost all languages, technologies and methodologies have tons of frameworks. Recently I was trying to figure out what is latest in the market and what are the different frameworks are available.

I tried to find one J2EE web framework and one javascript framework for a sample implementation. I reviewed Struts, Tapestry, JSF, Wicket, etc. I worked on Struts and JSF in the past which gave me the combination of knowledge in action based and component based framework. I don’t like component based framework hence I removed JSF, Wicket and Tapestry from my choice. The left out is action based framework almost all of the action based framework have very similar MVC pattern implementation except the marketing and additional feature. So I ended up in Struts in 2009 era. Which may surprise many of you but the truth is Struts still better than anyother framework in the current market.

On the browser side i.e. JavaScript framework many framework came into the market like DOJO, YUI, JQuery, GWT, Prototype, etc. Except GWT rest of the framework provide set of JavaScript API which is cross browser compatible and lots of good looking widgets to get richer look without an UI designer. The main goal of all the frameworks are to provide cross browser compatible script, easy AJAX implementation and ready to use widgets.  As we all know JavaScript cross browser coding and debugging is night mare anderror-prone.

GWT tried to solve the same problem in slightly different way i.e. converting Java code into JavaScript code. When I wrote JavaScript code in Java my productivity and code quality was good. I could organize the code into different classes and use effectively. Certainly all these are possible in JavaScript as well but how many developers knew writing advanced JavaScript coding and howmany IDEs support JavaScript code assit & debugging.? GWT attempt on using Java to generate JavaScript is great, keep up the innovation!

Reference: http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/