Why do you care if the generated objC is "hacky"? Correctness and performance is all that matters surely?

I've stuck to using GWT generated JS in a hidden webview on iOS, rather than J2ObjC.

I've found the process of compiling code on J2ObjC to be difficult and laborious. It may have improved but on initial investigation I ended up hacking a script to try and generate the correct command line for my project. Not to mention downloading and unpacking each library jar by hand.

GWT on the other hand integrates easily with Maven, pulls in all your dependencies and filters out unused methods.

Additionally, the code can be run anywhere else JS is available, in our case Windows Phone and Xbox One.

This is similar to Kirin framework (http://github.com/futureplatforms/kirin)

Cross platform development in Java is compiled to JS via GWT and can be deployed anywhere Java or JS is available.

It powers apps with hundreds of thousands of users on iOS, Android, Windows, Windows Phone and Xbox One.

See also: Facebook and security/privacy

Or Google and privacy/surveillance. A lot of criticism is just fashion or signalling.

Confused about these two comments. Are you both literally arguing that Google has higher standards for privacy/surveillance than its competitors and that facebook is better than its competitors for security/privacy?

Per TazeTSchnitzel's remark on Apple & McDonald's, also Facebook and Google seem to be held by public to a higher standard than other companies.

Ah, I understood that comment as saying that MacDonalds actually do have higher food sourcing standards because of the public scrutiny.

There also seems to be an implied complaint here that the public are being hypocritical, however it makes perfect sense that the larger the example, the more people would be interested in holding them to a high standard. This doesn't seem like a bad thing at all.

I'm interested to know what value TS/CS devs get from their code translating to "legible" JS?

I used TypeScript for a project earlier this year. As a C++/C# expert and a JavaScript noob, I found the clarity, the readability of my code to be far superior with TypeScript, well worth the extra tooling.

Then I found that after working that way for a number of months I no longer needed it. I picked up enough JavaScript along the way that I could I drop the training wheels and I am not looking back.