Google Web Tookit: Strongly typed AJAX

I’ve started playing with Google’s Web Toolkit .
It’s basically a solution to leverage DHTML and asynchronous remote calls, to build rich-client web interfaces. Well… what’s in there, then, different to any other AJAX framework?

GWT is written in Java. The UI classes are java implementations, and once tested & working, they’re compiled into a Javascript bundle. The systems allow step-by-step debugging in your local IDE (eclipse out-of-the-box, though integration with any other IDE will be easy because it’s just remote-debugging).

It looks great, and it might be a good solution, as long as the generated javascript is not plagued of bugs.

What I like of GWT until now: Strongly typed (Java). I’ve always been a fan of strong-typed languages. I’m not afraid of dynamic casting, prototyping, and other scripteous features. There’s a use for them, and I’ve greatly enjoyed Ruby’s fantastic mutational abilities.
But there are a lot of fields where I still prefer the language to be strongly typed. Maybe it’s just I’m getting old.

What I DON’T LIKE. It’s free beer. But it’s not opensourced. Not trying to be a zealot, here. I just think that a project of this kind would benefit greatly from community reviewing and patching.

In my tests… there seem to be some weird behaviours in the code… though it mainly works. I need some more testing on it. I’m playing with the idea of prototyping a small dynamic UI for Scarab to test it.