[Seaside] Rails and Seaside

[Wilkes Joiner]

On 1/6/06, Ramon Leon <rleon at insario.com> wrote:
> Ruby reduces the syntactic annoyances, but it keeps all the
> environmental annoyances, it's the same old architecture, lot's of text
> files, HTML templating, SQL, same old stuff, just on a diet, it's
> evolution.  Seaside is revolution, a new better way.  Ruby is the bridge
> by which Java/C# programmers can approach Smalltalk without losing their
> minds, so it only helps Smalltalk in the long run.  In the mean time,
> Seaside is a secret weapon, I don't mind it staying that way.

I couldn't agree more.  I've looked at Squeak off and on for the past
5 years or so, but it wasn't until this last year that I really
started to "work" with it.  Prior to that I was doing Java and .NET,
still get paid for Java work, and was using Ruby where I could.  After
a bit of experience with Ruby, Smalltalk was just too nice to neglect.

I also love the fact that it hasn't caught fire like RoR.  Once the
RoR word got out, I had to immediately bail from the mailing list. 
Way too much noise.  However, I do have opportunities to get paid to
do RoR development, which is a step up from doing Java work.

Finally, "Turtles all the way down" is the biggest selling point to me
for Squeak.  It just makes doing everything a pleasure.  I helped my
parents out by throwing together a static website for their coffee
shop over Christmas weekend.  I used Seaside to create the site and
generate all the html files.  Huge time saver.  I spent far more of my
time wrestling with CSS than anything else.  I feel that in Squeak I
am only limited by myself not by some language designer who is trying
to protect me.

- Wilkes