A component framework like GWT that emits Ajax code would be awesome. As far as I see the current situation Kotlin is Ajax-wise at the same level where Dart is: You can build an UI in an imperative fashion building the DOM. What I want, is to have e.g. a paging table with a defined API that takes a List<MyObject> so you can page through this list. Or to make it short, I want something like this:
There are a huge number of JS based frameworks for building user interfaces and writing widgets and whatnot. One I'm particularly fond of is AngularJS which takes care of the UI / DOM side of things; you then just write functions on a controller in some JS or compiles-to-JS language without having to worry about the UI side of things. Then if you need more widget stuff, there's Angular UI that lets you reuse all the various jQuery / jQuery UI - while keeping the same programming model and nice separation between UI widgets and layout versus business logic code.
So if you want to play with Kotlin and rich web apps; my recommendation would be to start with some good existing JS UI framework (e.g. AngularJS) and use Kotlin for the application logic on the client side and server (using either JAXRS or vertx.io on the server).
Thanks James, it's a good idea to use Kotlin w/ AngularJS in this way. I know AngularJS but I think at the moment I'll choose Vaadin or rather ZK for my frontend stuff.
Speaking of gwt, I have been particularly curious about whether you have something in mind that would be close to gwt type safe rpc.
Having kotlin on the browser and kotlin on the server, somebody must have ask that question before.
As for me, anything lightweight but type safe would make me very happy.