Seaside vs. Traditional

1.  I've experienced this many times while giving dozens of tutorials on Seaside. There are always some people that have a very hard time to get their head around Seaside, mostly because they think in terms of TRADITIONAL WEB FRAMEWORKS (my emphasis).

2.  On the other hand, Seaside is AMAZINGLY SIMPLE (my emphasis) for people without MUCH (my emphasis) prior web development experience.

Well, unfortunately, I have NO prior web development experience.  And I mean NONE.  Look at me, I have copied and pasted from another site and now have indents (likely due to HTML that I don't understand) that I can't even get rid of in the Gmail editor!

Anyway, I completely skipped that part of the 21st century, much to my current dismay.  I have Assembly Language, FORTRAN, and Visual Basic experience.  I am the classic [boring] example of "Why does the world seem inside out in Smalltalk!"

Nonetheless, I became enchanted by "a better way," and have stuck with my attempts to learn Smalltalk for nearly four years, most of which has been spent "building images" with each new Squeak release and staring at an "empty browser."  

I have a degree in Physics, I have been "programming" since I was 11, and I was a U.S. Army Airborne Ranger Medic.

Smalltalk has been the first thing in my life that was ever hard for me!  

So...fun! But...frustrating, because I wanted to get real WORK done with it, and kept going back to obviously "lesser ways" just to get something done.

Ok. Enough background. The point I am trying to make is that I tried. I googled. I would meet a couple of guys once a month or so that CAN Smalltalk. Seaside made sense...when they were doing it! Then, I went back to the empty browser.

My impression is still that you need to have a certain level of accomplishment in Smalltalk itself before the...elegance...of the framework as at your disposal. This isn't a bad thing, although it does leave me feeling a little incapable, but, hey--the number of objects at your command when you open a Squeak image for the first time are simply overwhelming. And "overwhelmed" would be how I would describe my experience with Seaside to be, because it "looks so easy," so why can't I figure it out? Which, coincidentally, is EXACTLY how I feel watching an experienced Smalltalker do ANYTHING.

So, I agree with you. Seaside IS harder for those with a "traditional" background. But I think traditional includes standard static language programming to produce basic client applications for typical operating systems. And from THAT point of view, I feel like I don't understand web programming ENOUGH to even lay things out on the screen where I want them to be, or get images into my application (yes, basic stuff like that).

And so then there is Aida as well, which WAS easier coming from a "traditional" (my definition) background.  

Now, I do not want to be thwarted so easily and will surely continue to try to understand Seaside because I think that will help me continue to understand Smalltalk.

But WHY was Aida easier for me? Is it because it is "less powerful?" "More procedural?" Because I CAN lay things out on the screen quite easily "the wrong way" with tables? Is it more "concrete?" These are all "negative" phrases as if I should assume somehow that Seaside has the upper hand in some way I do not understand.

I obviously don't have the answers! I didn't even know Aida existed until Janko posted his benchmarks on the Cincom site and because I was struggling with Seaside I gave it a shot. I DO think that after spending some time with Aida, I will be able to understand Seaside better, which is MOST interesting, because somewhere in that thought lies the gap between my own process capability (my ability to simply use Smalltalk) and the capability demanded by the system (Seaside, Aida, or any set of classes for that matter), which is the classic gap inherent in any system implementation.

Anyway, if I can figure this out better, I may be able to help others succeed where I have struggled, because I am obviously missing something.

In the meantime, keep up the good work! I am intrigued by the "meta" abilities of your solutions with both Seaside and Magritte and their apparent ability to act as an elegantly abstract layer for Content--which could be useful in appropriately complex situations. Unfortunately, I don't think I'm ready yet. Maybe someday...when I grow up, and can handle that level of abstraction!

I hope this doesn't sound like the beginning of another "Us vs. Them" post. I've had enough of that with LPGL vs. MIT! I just want to understand...what I don't understand!

Anyone going to the Smalltalk Solutions conference? I am trying to position myself to go...maybe in the shear presence of mastery I can pick up on some of the stuff I am missing!

Rob