I consider myself a decent java/web developer. In my career I have always used s

Question

I consider myself a decent java/web developer. In my career I have always used servlets and ejb's with a web front end, most recently incoporating jquery and ajax.

I can see the theoretical benefit of using GWT or Vaadin: it is my understanding they convert Java code to the required JavaScript/HTML. So the developer gets the benefit of cross browser compatibility and compile time error checking (of web GUI elements).

My question is threefold:

Are there any other benefits I am missing that would be gained using Vaadin or GWT?
I am actually quite confident and productive using HTML and JavaScript - so will I actually see any benefit? Or will it just make my knowledge of these areas redundant (as they are handled by GWT/Vaadin)?
Will the end result be that I can create enterprise scale data driven websites in a reasonably short time? I can however already do this, and I have not wasted any time learning GWT/Vaadin.

Explanation / Answer

So the develoepr gets the benefit of cross browser compatibility and compile time error checking (of web gui elements). My question is three fold, are there any other benefits I am missing that would be gained using Vaadin or GWT ?

You also get hosted mode debugging, so you can step in and out of server code from your client.

Also, you may find you insulate yourself from changes that will come about with evolution of browsers, HTML & Javascript. If your code is all GWT then you just rely on Google to keep up for you.

Secondly, I am actually quite confident and productive using html and javascript - so will I actually see any benefit ? Or will it just make my knowledge of these areas redundant (as they are handled by gwt/vaadin) ?

I doubt you will be a lot more productive. It depends maybe on how good you are at writing Java UI code. I prefer Javascript frankly.

Knowledge would not be totally redundant - its always better to know how things work under the hood.

Will the end result be that I can create enterprise scale data driven websites in a reasonably short time? I can however already do this, and I have not wasted any time learning GWT/Vaadin.

Unless you just really want those letters on your resume I don't see why you would do this right now. I'd wait and see if the market really moves much in that direction.

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