The GWT Conference Wrap Up
The conference was amazing. The only negative point, and this is the most tiny negative relative to everything else, would be that there was a bit of a pro Java slant at times which alienated developers using many other technologies. I guess its a sure fire way to get a positive response from a largely Java based audience. This however, was not something that any speaker from the GWT team did making a point to convey Java as a pragmatic, rather than religious, choice.
On the largely positive side of things, some of the most interesting people I’ve ever talked to were there. Bruce Johnson is an extremely practical no-compromise web purist and his dedication to GWT makes me feel lazy and Joel Webber’s depth of thought about the most specific details was wonderful. The rest of the GWT team were just as incredible. They all evoked a great amount of trust in the development of the toolkit. Their priorities are for the users of web apps and nothing else, not even Google itself - except in the sense that what’s good for the web is good for Google (of course helping the developer helps the user in many cases). The people attending the conference weren’t slouches either. Some of the brightest and most progressive developers were there. I found myself enthusiastically listening day in and out.
Adding to my positive experience was seeing my GWT book in print for the first time, watching it sell out by the second day and climb to #5 on Safari’s top books. Woo hoo!
