Ajax for Java developers: Exploring the Google Web Toolkit Here, Philip McCarthy goes does a tutorial on the Google Web Toolkit that confirms Willison's primary impression: GWT is for Java developers who don't want to "get their hands dirty" writing JavaScript. The whole tone of Google's writeup on GWT suggests an attitude of total disdain for JavaScript as a language, and the GWT encapsulates that attitude by shielding the developer from the actual web page functionality entirely. The result, as with some of the other Java developer tools like Echo 2, feels like you're developing a client Java application that just happens to run inside a browser. Not for me, thanks.