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

[Friedrich Dominicus]

Waldo Rubinstein <waldo at trianet.net> writes:

> 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.
Well I just can tell you my experience, other will disagree. However
here we go. I think Smalltalk/Seaside is easier to understand and
apply, have you checked the Squeak Seaside examples? I found them
amazing expecially the browser, however I did use CL and UCW for other
reasons. I do not more about handling Common Lisp programs and how to
run them "without" gui, then I know about Smalltalks. I assume there
is a way to run Squeak in a sort of console, but I do not know. 

The other reason for me to use CL is cl-sql. It gives me persitence
nearly for free. That is "a good thing" (TM;-). I just read about ORDB
wrappers but did not have used them. Me seems that "generating" code
instead of writing code is better supported in Common Lisp, that's
another reasoin I choose to go the CL, but I found ruby on rails quite
amazing and I found that there is much more in place for "application
development", I were in contact with Drew on Lisp-on-lines, but he
told me I'm nuts to expect his software to work out-of-the-box. 

Ruby is a Smalltalk with a "different syntax, but if you know
Smalltalk you can learn ruby in no time really. There exists book 
"Agile web development with rails" or the like which explains rails
very well. If I'd start from scratch I probably would choose
rails. 

However there do exist something like a web-development system from
the developers of PLT Scheme. I _guess_ that's one base example of
applying continuations in web programming. 

http://download.plt-scheme.org/doc/299.200/html/web-server/

The PLT people do have a lot of documentation and their Scheme is
"nearly" a Common Lisp. 




>
> 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.

Well IMHO it's worth using Common Lisp, however you better have some
"hacker-mentality". A lot of Lisp Software is available but
documentation is often sparse. Counterexamples are stuff from Franz,
Edi Weitz and a few others. UCW was and is a lot of
trial-and-error-and-asking here for me. There still are a lot of
things mysterious for me. Adding or removing slots e.g, changing
defactions are hard to understand for me, how to intervene TAL with
Lisp is at least  a very dark greyhole for me. 

It seems however that others do not have that trouble, so it may be
*me* but UCW....

Regards
Friedrich