google web toolkit
in the pre-ajax era, I was extremely happy that I didn't have to struggle with web development, but could instead write fat clients in good ol' java. then came the times when I was like "hmmm, this whole new flickr/gmail/reddit stuff really IS cool" and I got a bit jealous of all these smart developers who know how to create such slick user interfaces even though they are restricted by such crappy languages and technologies.
the latest google offspring, google web toolkit, is still wet from birth but seems to have been built for me:
Google Web Toolkit (GWT) is a Java software development framework that makes writing AJAX applications like Google Maps and Gmail easy for developers who don't speak browser quirks as a second language. [...] You write your front end in the Java programming language, and the GWT compiler converts your Java classes to browser-compliant JavaScript and HTML.
it comes with alles und scharf: nice examples, eclipse-support, a blog, younameit. in fact the getting started is so well written that I feel like I don't even have to try it out to know that it's cool. but I will (and I'll let you know about it).
