[johnyzee]

For rich web applications, GWT is a great option. It is a blessing to write the frontend with the same language and toolchain as the backend, re-using domain classes and constants across the projects.

Our current project uses Spring MVC for the backend, exposing REST services, and GWT for the frontend, with Resty for marshalling data structures back and forth. It works really well.

[smoyer]

And there's Errai to extend server side CDI (injection, events and context) to the GWT client side application. Substitute REST (using JAX-RS) for the server-side calls and you can provide the same API for external programs and your GWT client.

[Ygor]

How do you feel about improvements in GWT development speed? In terms of development mode, compilation times and the whole process of making a java code change and seeing the result in a browser? Is there a lot of work on making this better?

GWT is nice, but I remember a lot of frustration came from buggy dev modes and compilation times.

[stephen]

We've been using GWT master with both incremental compilation + Java 8 lambdas (!) and it's pretty fun.

Granted, the non-JVM debugging experience is not nearly as magical as it was before, but I believe there is some work afoot to merge SDBG (source map-based debugging in Eclipse) + the GWT plugin. Still WIP.

[johnyzee]

It has improved a lot just within the last year, with the new development mode landing, and it will be really good once incremental compilation arrives, which is scheduled for this year. Just compile, refresh browser, done.

I kind of enjoyed debugging in the IDE with the old dev mode, but I agree it was kind of quirky and slow.