Background

Original Motivation

* I was building up a prototype application that involved massive amounts of client-side javascript.

* Difficulties: ramp-up, code cleanliness, DOM stuff, unit testing

* Productivity declined as the code base got bigger

About Me (and Guidewire)

* Guidewire does enterprise software for insurance companies, and everything is written in Java with a web interface

* We follow agile programming practices (Scrum, TDD, some XP things)

* We have 'a lot' of infrastructure for Java (auto-builds, automated unit test harness, etc.), and none for javascript

* I tend to think in terms of Java and have gotten used to the excellent Java tools (especially IntelliJ IDEA)

* I don't really spend much time programming in scripting languages, which makes me a bit biased

Next: PresentationProblemsWithJavascript