freebsd_dude

Im considering starting a new web app and want to know more about GWT vs just Javascript (GWT compiles Java to Javascript). Does GWT offer productivity gains over just using JS? Any tips on using GWT?

I am building a web app that provides a graphical rich web interface to the functions of the statistical programming language R.

Here is my elevator pitch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3YYndEVNc0

I know this wont appeal to programmers/hackers. Thats not the goal. The target user is Joe Data Analyst who doesn't program but needs to analysis and he cannot/is slow to use the command line - we all know people like this.

What do you think? Are there enough of these light weight data analysts out there (who will pay for the service) to make it worth my while?

Thanks.

All this talk that HTML5 will replace flash has got me wondering: one reason to use flash over ajax is flash is faster at rendering large amounts of data in a grid: say a grid of dimensions exceeding 10000x100. How will HTML5 increase the performance of grid rendering? Or will paging and on-the-fly (live) fetching still be needed?