[Bese-devel] is ucw worth it?

[Marco Baringer]

i got klined from freenode.org but i read that question ('is ucw worth
it?') off meme and i figured this is as good a place as any to answer:

depends. ucw is worth the effort iff your application's ui fits into
this model:

- everything on the screen represents an object

- all the user does is interact with objects on the screen

- objects on the screen ask other objects to do some of the work for
  them. when they do this the other objects take over the screen until
  their work is done.

don't let the mvc bastards fool you, not all apps fit into this model.

what do you lose by following this model:

- your application is no longer 'page based' (a single page my be
  composed of multiple interacting objects). you start working against
  all the page based tools out there (and all the experience we, the
  general web community, have built up regarding web apps).

- the idea of a 'url' representing a single piece of data (REST) makes
  no sense. caches and proxies become and impedement and not a usefull
  tool.

what do you gain by following this model:

- you can very easily reuse bits of the ui in different contexts for
  different purposes.

- you can do this to make sure that users are logged in before
  acessing a private part of the app (no matter how they get there):

  (defmethod start :before ((whatever private-task-mixin) &rest args)
    (declare (ignore args))
    (unless (get-session-value 'user)
      (call 'login)))

  [Larry D'Anna: you rock]

p.s. - the fact that i can bend any app into this model only proves
that i've put too much time into ucw. :)

p.p.s. - i want to be the first person to tell new ucw users to look
before they jump; ucw is a different mindset, it may very well not be
worth the effort to learn it.

-- 
-Marco
Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget the perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.
	-Leonard Cohen