Lost amongst the geeks

From Chapter 1 of book of Vaadin I quote the following. Vaadin Framework is a Java web application development framework that is designed to make creation and maintenance of high quality web-based user interfaces easy. Vaadin supports two different programming models: server-side and client-side . The server-driven programming model is the more powerful one . It lets you forget the web and program user interfaces much like you would program a desktop application with conventional Java toolkits such as AWT, Swing, or SWT. But easier. While traditional web programming is a fun way to spend your time learning new web technologies, you probably want to be productive and concentrate on the application logic. The server-side Vaadin framework takes care of managing the user interface in the browser and the AJAX communications between the browser and the server . With the Vaadin approach, you do not need to learn and deal directly with browser technologies, such as HTML or JavaScript. ...

The GWT project states that, GWT is a development toolkit for building and optimizing complex browser-based applications. Its goal is to enable productive development of high-performance web applications without the developer having to be an expert in browser quirks, XMLHttpRequest, and JavaScript. GWT is used by many products at Google, including AdWords, AdSense, Flights, Hotel Finder, Offers, Wallet, Blogger. It’s open source, completely free, and used by thousands of developers around the world. I quote the development lifecycle of GWT App from the project site as well. Write : The GWT SDK provides a set of core Java APIs and Widgets. These allow you to write AJAX applications in Java and then compile the source to highly optimized JavaScript that runs across all browsers, including mobile browsers for Android and the iPhone. Constructing AJAX applications in this manner is more productive thanks to a higher level of abstraction on top of common concepts like DOM...