GWT development is UNBEARABLY slow

[John Wheeler]

The cross-browser time-savings are completely diminished when you take into account OOPHM or hosted mode development in ANY of the browsers with ALL of the optimizations on stackoverflow, in the newsgroups, etc. It is incredibly slow and frustrating.

People considering GWT development need to know that the hosted mode and out of process plugins are essentially worthless because once your app gets to one or two screens, you'll be deploying to live everytime you want to test. This just sucks for app engine apps which take over a minute to deploy. I don't like having to wait 5 minutes for compile/test cycles.

Seriously, it takes 5 seconds for a button to click. Do you guys plan on doing anything about it ever?

[Dennis Haupt]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

i agree it's slow, but not THAT slow. the hosted mode is up to 10x
slower than the javascript mode (for me)
i assume it to be the gwt server <-> browser overhead for native
javascript calls

> -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the
> Google Groups "Google Web Toolkit" group. To view this discussion
> on the web visit
> https://groups.google.com/d/msg/google-web-toolkit/-/q_Es5YL0ggcJ.
> To post to this group, send email to
> google-we...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this
> group, send email to
> google-web-tool...@googlegroups.com. For more options,
> visit this group at
> http://groups.google.com/group/google-web-toolkit?hl=en.

- --

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v2.0.14 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/
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=p597
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

[Jim Douglas]

You said "any browsers", so it's not clear which one you use for
primary development. GWT DevMode is very slow in Chrome, but it's
perfectly acceptable in Firefox. Also, you pay most of the cost up
front in the first load; reloading your browser page after making
changes is very fast.

Also, when you do need to test production mode JavaScript (e.g. for
Mobile Safari, which doesn't have a DevMode), you can tell the GWT
compiler to only build a single target (e.g. webkit) by including a
line like this in your *.gwt.xml file:

<set-property name='user.agent' value='safari'/>

[karim duran]

Hi John,

In my opinion GWT is not for little application ( just a newsgroup or forum ). For big application you earn lot of time because it's easy to build the user interface, easy to test, easy to add functionalities...and easy to deploy. Really cross browser, and friendly java based.

I agree with you. In dev mode or hosted mode it can be a little bit slow.

But when i deploy in production mode ( Tomcat or Glassfish server ), it's fast, responsive, with full AJAX support. I can display complex UI in any browsers, without worry about javascript, IE browser non conformance. Etc...

Really, this technology is a real pleasure.

If you have some pb with hosted mode and appengine, you can write Ant script or Maven script to automatically deploy on tomcat, on each build, and test in real condition.

In hosted mode, the code is "interpreted" by a dedicated JVM, it's why it can be slow. But once compiled in javascript and deployed on server, for me it's fast.

I think it's not a good idea to test your application every 5 mns. It's not productive. Instead, i write 20 or 30 java classes, design my UI, build my server component, and then, test my application.

You can really build a sophisticated application in few days. Once on server it run fast.

Regards.

Karim Duran

2011/9/5 John Wheeler <jo...@highvolumeseller.com>

The cross-browser time-savings are completely diminished when you take into account OOPHM or hosted mode development in ANY of the browsers with ALL of the optimizations on stackoverflow, in the newsgroups, etc. It is incredibly slow and frustrating.

People considering GWT development need to know that the hosted mode and out of process plugins are essentially worthless because once your app gets to one or two screens, you'll be deploying to live everytime you want to test. This just sucks for app engine apps which take over a minute to deploy. I don't like having to wait 5 minutes for compile/test cycles.

Seriously, it takes 5 seconds for a button to click. Do you guys plan on doing anything about it ever?

--