PMD suggested in my GWT project that I should change my switch to multiple ifs if it has fewer than 3 branches. I know that this is compiled to Javascript, but I wondered if it made any difference in GWT. Do you think the generated Javascript is more efficient with if's compared to switch? Does the current GWT compiler (2.4) do any optimisation on this?
According to this site: http://oreilly.com/server-administration/excerpts/even-faster-websites/writing-efficient-javascript.html#the_switch_statement found via this answer: https://stackoverflow.com/a/2923007/66416 It does matter:
In JavaScript, if statements are generally faster than switch statements when there are just one or two conditions to be evaluated.
A quick scan of a compiled GWT 2.4 file found no replacements of 'small' switch statements into if statements. So it actually might be a useful suggestion of PMD.