"Google's Web Toolkit":http://googlewebtoolkit.blogspot.com/2006/05/welcome-to-gwt-blog.html, or GWT, is a pretty neat idea. Code your web app in Java using Google's API, debug and so forth in your Java IDE, and then dump an automagically created html/javascript version of your site in production based on the Java source.
However, I still cringe when I see code like...
public void anonClickListenerExample() {
Button b = new Button("Click Me");
b.addClickListener(new ClickListener() {
public void onClick(Widget sender) {
// handle the click event
}
});
}
Where as in Ruby On Rails:
def anonClickListenerExample
link_to_button('Click Me', do_something)
end
I'm not sure if they both buy you the same functionality, but I know which one I'd rather read/code.
GWT is a nice solution to web development, and Java is known by many so "strategically" Google have made a good move. Personally though, I think it's the wrong way forward for web development.
RoR is not perfect, but it's pretty damn good.