I noticed that you can change front-end code without rebooting the system 
and rebuilding.  However, this doesn't seem true about the back-end code.  
Am I missing something?


Going forward GWT will only provide a simple server to serve static files 
out of the box. If you want DevMode to launch an application server for 
your server side code you have to use "-server 
com.google.gwt.dev.shell.JettyLauncher" to get the implementation GWT had 
always provided (but it will be removed in a future release) or provide 
your own implementation of GWTs "ServletContainerLauncher".  If you use a 
proper build tool with separated modules for GWT code and for server code 
you usually already have some mechanism to launch your app server. Also the 
coupling GWT did before always produced classpath issues. 

So going forward it is up to the developer to serve the backend code.

 

Also, since I originally used GWT, I have learned HTML, CSS, JavaScript, 
etc.  Now I feel like it is easier to specify layout in HTML/CSS than using 
all of that GWT Java code.  GWT front-end code seems incredibly verbose.  
That leads me to two questions:

1. Can I use HTML/CSS?  If so, are there examples?


GWT SDK provides UiBinder which allows you to write XML documents with a 
matching Java class and GWT will generate an additional Java class from the 
XML document to glue both together, 
see: https://www.gwtproject.org/doc/latest/DevGuideUiBinder.html

It is still a bit verbose compared to JS frameworks which support two way 
databinding and plain HTML but it is good enough if you like to read HTML 
instead of code.

 

2. Is there a graphical GUI system that allows someone to graphically 
design an interface and have it generate all of that Java code for the 
front-end?


There was an Eclipse plugin called GWT Designer, but I think it does not 
work anymore. I am not aware of anything else. Your best bet is probably 
using UiBinder XML and some AI help.

 

Lastly, and just FYI, in response to what Google did with GWT at that time, 
I ended up writing my own open-source, full-stack web development 
framework.  In addition to being able to change front-end code while 
developing, it also supports changing back-end code without having to 
reboot the server or recompile anything.  It also has built-in support for 
microservices, REST (actually JSON-RPC), authentication, custom HTML 
controls, SQL API, reporting, CSV import/export, crypto, LLM interfaces, 
and a lot more.  It has been used in production systems for a few years 
now.  It's at kissweb.org


Sounds interesting. 

For GWT related libraries you can take a look 
at https://github.com/gwtboot/gwt-boot-awesome-lili


-- J.

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