[Seaside] Should I become a Seasider?

[Marten Feldtmann]

Hey,

entering another company (with development temas) with Seaside-only 
knowledge gives you no win - other than personal confidence, that you 
have investigated other technologies. They will expect, that you know 
THEIR technology and not the other way around.

Entering as external solution provider into a company is a different 
thing. Actually technology should not be any topic there in tose project 
discussions (but perhaps you have to use/interact with other technology) 
and you are free to use Seaside. But you are - in most of the cases - 
not selling Seaside. You must sell solutions.

Even though you may hope, that you will be cheaper than others - I would 
not be so sure about it.  We have seen customers here in Germany, who 
would like to have a german company - but prices should be on a level on 
eastern European countries. More or less impossible to do. And all those 
companies out there using php or other stuff - THEY can use thousands of 
already available libraries, for all of the most common tasks.

Therefore if you are facing projects with common tasks - how will you 
beat those php programmers ???? If you are in projects with 
not-so-common needs, you get more chances to have good prices.

And - as Sebastian answered - Seaside is a small component of WWW 
development. You MUST know Javascript, you MUST know CSS - especially 
superb knowledge of CSS may put your technical solution into an 
nice-looking solution.

Then also consider environment technolgies like Apache to support your 
solution

Marten



Am 08.04.2011 23:53, schrieb Ralph Boland:
> This post is about making a living as a web developer using Seaside.
>
> I am an unemployed software developer in Calgary (1,000,000 people),
> Alberta, Canada.
> I have used Squeak for years but I have found no Smalltalk work in Calgary
> and in fact know of only one small company in Calgary that uses Smalltalk.
>
> I know very little about Seaside.  My impression is that websites
> developed using
> Seaside are somewhat slower than with other web development tools and that
> Seaside uses more memory (I assume on the server side) than other web
> development tools.  Nevertheless there are web developers using
> Seaside successfully.
> Are these impressions correct?
>
>
>
> Lets assume I decide to become a web developer (something I know
> almost nothing about)
> using Seaside as my competitive edge. To my knowledge I would be the
> only Seaside
> web developer in Calgary.
>
> 1)  How long (starting basically from scratch) is it going to take
> before I am competent;
>       or at least competent enough to seek clients?  Assume I am a
> competent Squeak developer.
>
> 2)  Which version(s) of Smalltalk should I use?
>       I know Squeak and have used Visualworks in the distant past.
>
> 3)  How screwed will my clients be if my ticker stops unexpectedly.
> Can Seaside developers
>       from outside Calgary pick up the slack for my hypothetical clients?
>
> 4)  Is there any areas within the web development would that I should
> concentrate on or avoid?
>
> 5)  Is there any additional software/hardware that I would need other than my
>       home computer (running Ubuntu) and Squeak/Seaside?
>       My resources for investments is very limited.
>
> Are there other questions that I should have asked?
>
> Starting a business is generally a tough deal so please don't butter me up
> with glowing reviews of Seaside.
>
> Regards,
>
> Ralph Boland
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