I think GWT is too much abstraction. Javascript is in fact a powerful language. You can write object oriented code and use namespaces. With a library like jQuery you won't have to worry about browser compatibility issues for most of what you do. With all the great browser developer tools available (like Firebug) in all major browsers now a days it is very easy to work with javascript. When a javascript error occurs I can easily pinpoint where it happened in my code. I can watch variables and know all that is going on in detail because I am working against code I wrote (unlike GWT).
