[Bese-devel] UCW vs Seaside (and Scheme)

[Waldo Rubinstein]

Hi All,

I'm fairly new to both Lisp and Smalltalk (less than 6 months  
experience in each). The reason for my interest in these is because I  
feel, from what I have been reading, that both Seaside and UCW offer  
more practical solutions to the real-life problems I need to solve  
for developing web-based custom apps.

I have to say I have spent more time learning about Smalltalk/Seaside  
than I have invested in Lisp/UCW. However, somehow it feels Lisp/UCW  
seem to provide a better roadmap and more stable platform.

Then, after googling a bit more, I came across certain articles that  
point out some differences between Lisp and Scheme. Particularly on  
the topic of continuations and the fact that these are native to  
Scheme vs to both Smalltalk and Lisp. Then I wondered, if what I'm  
looking for is better support for continuation-based development,  
should I be looking into Scheme?

Before I spent much time looking into Scheme, I decided to quickly  
glance at Scheme's support for some of the minimum requirements I  
have for web app development. For example, I need to access MySQL and/ 
or Postgres databases as well as the easy manipulation (mainly  
generation) of PDF and CSV files. Also, I would like to start using  
object databases more than relational databases. I didn't find much  
support for these in Scheme. However, I did come across some projects  
for both Lisp and Smalltalk to support my needs, which brought me  
back to wanting to learn more about UCW and Seaside.

At this point, I'm wondering if there is anyone in this list that can  
shed some light into clearing up where I should be going. I've always  
been fascinated with Lisp, but never spent enough time to learn it.  
Now that I have some time, I'd like to know where I should be  
investing my time more wisely (Lisp, Smalltalk, Scheme). I don't know  
if I should really rule out Scheme and may be someone could also  
comment on it.

Any information you can provide will really help, even if you can  
just point me to where I can read more and learn more to make a more  
informed decision.

Thank you in advance,
Waldo