They say history repeats itself. Here is an instance where it happened twice.

The “C” Days

In the days of 8086 and MIPS there were different types of instruction sets for different processors. Due to this programs written in assembly language for one processor could not run on another.

The “C” approach came in as a gospel, where in the programmer can write code in one language and compile it to any instruction set. This revolutionized the computer industry in the 1970s-80s, and we saw millions of lines of code written during this time.

The “Java” Days

Then during the 1990s the same problem manifested in a different form. This time there was a different verity of Operating systems. The “c” code could not keep up with the different flavors of underlying OS operations and quickly writing ubiquitous code became a herculean task.

This is when smart folks at Sun rewrote history and invented Java. The concept was same, write code in one language then compile it such that it can be run on different platforms (OS). Though there is a slight variation, this time the compiled code runs over a Virtual machine which wraps the underlying platform. This virtual machine in turn takes care of platform variation.

The “GWT” Days

As we said earlier, History has knack of repeating itself. Now in 2000, our industry is moving towards the client server architecture. JavaScript is the leading technology for writing the rich clients these days. Many frameworks have sprung up which tries to make JavaScript development fast and easy. But again all these frameworks face the same issue as did java and c. JavaScript can run on different browser IE, FireFox, Google Chrome and many more. All these browsers have different implementations of JavaScript which cause a nightmare for developers.

Enter GWT (Google Web Toolkit). The concept is same again. The code is written in Java and its is compiled to Java Script. All the nitty-gritty’s related to browser is taken care of by the GWT compiler. This technology was released by Google around mid 2006 and it has come a long way since then. Its much stable and production ready. GWT is on its way to become a force similar to C and Java.

Conclusion

These are few designs which are so powerful that can alter the course of history. The compiler is one such thing. We have seen it revolutionize the IT industry time and again. This time it’s taken the form of GWT. As developers, it’s high time that we look upon this technology closely and prepare ourselves for the new future.

http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/