[Seaside] another reason Rails gets market share and Seaside doesn't

Jason Rogers jacaetevha at gmail.com
Tue Jul 17 12:28:01 UTC 2007


The bulk of my development work has been in Java, Smalltalk and Ruby
(~60%, ~10%, ~30% respectively).  I have done quite a bit of
development in Rails.  With this background, I would like to offer one
more reason why I think Rails gets more market-share than our beloved
Seaside.

Hypothesis: many developers get sucked into Rails and the RailsWay
simply because it's so easy to prototype new apps or get quick and
dirty solutions running.

Most of my Rails apps have started their lives as
quick-n-dirty-solutions-to-a-very-present-problem.  Rails makes it
very easy to do that.  Sadly, Seaside doesn't.  With the work Alan
Knight is putting into Glorp, and the ActiveRecord equivalent for it,
this may get easier.  Like it or not, there are a lot of data sets out
there in relational databases that need front ends -- Seaside falls
down here just a little.

I may be branded a heretic here, but for those types of apps I will
most likely continue using Rails.  For my personal apps (or the apps
that don't have such tight deadlines) I will continue using Seaside.

I don't really think file-based vs. image-based is the big issue.
Developers are (by and far) a lazy lot and they want solutions that
help them to do more with less.  Of course, we can argue that the
image-based development of Smalltalk really does do that, but the
reality is that it doesn't /feel/ like that when you start using
Seaside without having a significant amount of development experience
in Smalltalk already.  Typing the arguments on a web page doesn't sell
it -- people have to feel it.

Conclusion: I think that the less barriers we have to the lazy lot,
the more they will consider using Seaside for their small projects.
Once you get them doing that they will be more likely to choose
Seaside for their larger projects.

-- 
Jason Rogers

"I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live;
yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life
which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of
the Son of God, who loved me, and gave
himself for me."
    Galatians 2:20


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