> Unfortunately, the current Matrix website implementation relies on an internally deprecated web platform slated for retirement.
GWT, as you suggest, is definitely a dinosaur.
> rewrite Matrix using newer web technologies like Angular,
How long until Angular goes the way of GWT, though? It's not exactly a beloved technology. Not quite the same level of pain as GWT, but Angular codebases aren't something I'd like to maintain either.
In 2014 most of the AWS console was written in GWT, and I worked on one of the services. Honestly? I kind of loved it. As a backend Java dev, it made a lot of sense to me, and I almost never had to touch any Javascript.
Every service team at that time chose their own tech stack, and so sometimes I would hunt for ideas of how to implement something in other team's codebases, so I got to see the different tech stacks.
For a brief moment Angular was really popular, and then fizzled out just as fast. For me, it was the worst of all the options by far.
It is not beloved on HN, on Java and .NET shops is the usually the SPA everyone goes for, given the similarities with MVC frameworks, and it was build from scratch for TypeScript, not something that some comunity person is writing type libraries for.
We wrote Application (medical) with GWT in 2010, and we still maintain it, occasionally adding new features.
Once you figure out build step and magic incitation to make debugger work (and docment it), It's really not bad,
and maintaining is easier then most other "older" codebases I come across.
Old rubby/php/javascrip(jQuery/whatever) project is usually pain because they all use tons of external packages/libs that you have to update find new ones etc every time you take project off the shelf. With GWT and Java it just works, because we didn't use that many other libraries and Java libraries generally put a lot more effort in backwards compatibility.
So no I would not start new projects in GWT anymore, but I think that current react projects will be a lot harder to maintain in 10 years, than GWT is.
I've never understood all of the Angular hate on HN. I do understand the fact that it's very much the "corporate" option like .NET is, but that doesn't make it bad. I actually really like it and find it very intuitive.
In my short time working with it, I found it frustrating to debug. Using an incorrect tag meant it would simply be ignored with no indication of why my thing doesn't work, and I found tracing issues back to their HTML tag to be annoying.
The equivalent React/Vue/etc would throw a Javascript exception. Stacktraces aren't the best debugging experience, but they're functional.
I also think Angular inherits from a more traditional UI lineage of composing styling on an element, which I find less clear than something like React that has a more backend-y development flow. That's just personal preference, but I started on the backend so Angular's "build an element and then wire it up" makes less sense to me than React's "figure out the data flow and then build elements on that" style.
I don't find it showstopping. I wouldn't turn down a job because they use Angular. If someone asked me what framework to use, I just probably wouldn't suggest Angular.
I'm not sure that's true. They don't reveal separate numbers for GCP, but they put it under "Google Cloud" umbrella with Google Docs and other products. The revenues are growing, but they're still losing money: https://www.crn.com/news/cloud/alphabet-earnings-google-clou...
Were these rumors based on anything other than "Google will shut it down"? It is always the top comment no matter which product or service we are talking about, so it doesn't mean anything
Google acquired ITA in 2010. Cape Air switched their entire flight reservation/departure control system to ITA/Google in 2012. Google discontinued the system in 2013.
That is absolutely not true. While React has a big piece of the market right now, it has not "clearly won this ballgame". Both Vue and Svelte are very much active in the industry and gaining terrain fast.
Frontend development is an extremely fast moving field and claiming a "clear winner" makes no sense.
Having said that, I agree that Angular may not be the best option in the general sense, but given that it is a Google-backed framework, they probably have the best talent available to build tools efficiently.
Look at how many jobs being offered in angular, vue or svelte vs react, in any given freelance job portal.
It's 1 to 5 at best.
If you want to punish your project and have issues hiring from a limited pool, sure go ahead.
Yes, most current job offerings may be for React, but Angular had that spot a couple of years ago and ruby on rails was the cool new thing to work with before that. My point is that this is not a permanent thing. Technologies change, preferences change. React will be replaced with better tools for the job (IMO Vue and Svelte are better designed than React), I am sure of that. Besides, if you are going to hire by limiting your pool by frameworks, you are doing things wrong. Any decent developer that can work in an Angular codebase should have no problem with React, Svelte or Vue.
So they're rebuilding the app in TypeScript with Angular instead of with Java+GWT.