Editorial: Proof of why GWT Deferred Binding rocks

Soap Box On:

So, I admit it. I'm biased. I gave the presentation on Deferred Binding at the GWT Conference. It's hard explaining to people why this is such a powerful and needed feature in GWT. End users especially won't really be able to grok why, but I think Microsoft provides the best evidence in the form of Microsoft Volta, the GWT competitor from Microsoft that was supposed to blow GWT away.

Microsoft's test application certainly blows away my browser: http://labs.live.com/volta/samples/WordWorm.html

It made over 171 HTTP requests to load up all of its generated Javascript, over 2 megabytes of code, it took 20 seconds to startup, ran slow once it did, threw exceptions and sent me into the debugger, and when I looked at the code, I noticed that it had compatibility code for other browsers in my download, code chewing up space and network bandwidth that are useless to my Firefox instance.

I realize that this is a prototype, but come on. Microsoft should not be talking smack about GWT until they've got something to show that doesn't have so many easy to criticize flaws.

-Ray