Should I become a Seasider?
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On Apr 9, 2011, at 11:07 AM, Sean Allen wrote: > On Sat, Apr 9, 2011 at 11:14 AM, Norbert Hartl <[hidden email]> wrote: >> >> Am 09.04.2011 um 15:02 schrieb Sean Allen: >> >>> plication". The difference I like to make is where the focus in >>> development lies. >>>> >>>> A solution for a "web presentation" site focusses mainly on the design. Here you will have a designer that designs "pages" in photoshop. A common way is to create templates that bring the photoshop design to the web. You concentrate on pages and usually you need a lot of markup in order to come close to the photoshop design. Seaside does not fit perfectly into this scenario. But I would assume that a lot of your customers just want a "web presentation". >>> >>> Off topic here... but this method of doing presentational development >>> using photoshop has always struck me as the equivalent of using uml to >>> design you entire application ahead of time w/o any consideration of >>> the language platform etc. >> >> It works quite well if you have a couple of pages that have just links between them and not that much dynamism. It just does not work well if you cross the border towards applications. In this area designers are exactly like programmers. Programmers want to program and designers want to design. Both leads to heavy change rates. >> > > I've found it leads to designs that are great for print and usually > sucks for the web especially as a photoshop file is not going to > represent the possibilities of different browsers and can't do any > dynamic elements of the page at all. I have noticed similar things. People with many years of design experience or who went to school for design ages ago and didn't stay up-to-date are particularly bad. Interaction design is very important and not taught everywhere or as part of every school's design program. But hopefully that's changing. It would be hard to get a job doing nothing but print design today, I think. — Daniel Lyons _______________________________________________ seaside mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/seaside |
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In reply to this post by Richard Durr-2
AJAX + Javascript is not a superior alternative to continuations. In fact, you can use ajax and continuations and javascript together, and it's awesome. So that's bunk.
Pat
On Apr 8, 2011, at 3:54 PM, Richard Durr wrote: I strongly advice against it. _______________________________________________ seaside mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/seaside |
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In reply to this post by Ralph Boland
On Apr 8, 2011, at 2:53 PM, Ralph Boland wrote:
> 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? > > What I am wondering is should I learn Seaside and then attempt to sell my web > development services in Calgary? My impression is that: > 1) No one in Calgary has ever heard of Seaside so selling my services > would be difficult. > 2) Since I should be able to develop web sites faster using Seaside I > should be able to > offer my services at a discount and hopefully be able to find > business that way. But > since no one but myself (at least locally) would be able to > maintain the web sites, > potential customers are going to be very shy. > 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. My suggestion is to learn Seaside and use it to build side projects of your own. You've probably got some ideas, and Seaside is the way to go there. The IDE (Pharo) + components + continuations combine to blow everything else out of the water. I say this as a pretty sharp Rails developer - nothing even comes close to development speed in Seaside. That's a big advantage. It gives you free license to experiment with ideas. Also, because everything is smalltalk code and everything is an object, you have a much more flexible, understandable system. Right now I've got some beta users who can benefit from features that probably wouldn't be useful to anyone else...normally I'd say, "Sorry, I'm not building that," but considering that I can build a little component in less than an hour, and plug it in only for their account, it's worth it to me to do it. I haven't been doing this for long, but I'm comfortable customizing a lot more of my app for certain customers, because it's just so easy to do. I'm using Seaside to build my startup projects because it's a huge technical advantage. I earn money right now by doing contract work, and as much as I'd love to use Seaside in those gigs, I feel like that would be screwing over my clients. They're going to have a hell of a time finding someone to maintain it when I leave. Building a business of any sort is challenging enough, as you may already know and are definitely about to find out. Don't compound the headaches by throwing a niche technology like Seaside into the mix. Pat_______________________________________________ seaside mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/seaside |
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In reply to this post by NorbertHartl
Hi again,
There are just a few thoughts I'd like to add. First, I already mentioned this between the lines, and others, too. One big selling point on Smalltalk and Seaside is one advantage merely no other environment has. Your business logic, the only layer that brings you money, can easily be transferd to any kind of it infrastracture and software architecture. Once you have it, you can make, web applications, web services, fatclients, smart clients, desktop applications, application servers,... providing access to it. You just add a different access layer and your done. Same with the data acccess layer. Has anyone ever written a desktop application in php? If I where you, I would start my business with a proper idea based on a desktop application. When you think this might be insteresting for a potential costumer you can then ask him, if he's interested in your business logic, how he might prefer to access it. I did all different kinds of software within Smalltalk and those guys who wrote, that Seaside is too much overhead for a pure beginner for implementing a sole presenting web site are absolutly right. Not the guy who implements an application gains money,... it's the guy using it. You can just raise you profit, be beeing a real specialist, or a seldom guy, or by providing a business logic that nobody else might be able to offer. Finding other Seasiders or Smalltalkers is really no big deal. It's indeed just an argument to lower your price. Maybe you shouldn't even care about HTMl, CSS and Javascript. Once you have a business logic and a costumer,... you should be able to pay a specialist for the rest needed. "But I still whish there were more base components for Seaside. Things like different kinds of forms and lightboxes..." (Orderform, Contactform, Filterform, Loginform.... ) I implemented in all major laanguages,... php, c/c++, C#, JAVA,... and Smalltalk. There's absolutly no doubt about it. Smalltalk is way more productive than all the others. So setting up a business and doing prototyping,... Smalltalk would be my first choice. If you costumers, might not want smalltalk but might pay good,... you can still migrate your payed business logic,.... and earn much more money by beeing inproductive ;-) Sebastian Am 09.04.2011 02:09, schrieb Norbert Hartl: > Hi Ralph, > > there is little to add for me. The ones that wrote before me did a pretty decent job. I just want to add one dimension on decision making. You can read between the lines in most of the responses written so far. There is some distinction in what you call "web development". Nowadays I separate web development in "web presentation" and "web application". The difference I like to make is where the focus in development lies. > > A solution for a "web presentation" site focusses mainly on the design. Here you will have a designer that designs "pages" in photoshop. A common way is to create templates that bring the photoshop design to the web. You concentrate on pages and usually you need a lot of markup in order to come close to the photoshop design. Seaside does not fit perfectly into this scenario. But I would assume that a lot of your customers just want a "web presentation". > > A "web application" focusses more on the flow of actions between the pages. Thus the individual components a page is made of become more important. This is the area where seaside excels. You can realize rather complex application easily. On the other hand it complicates the handling of CSS. In a template scenario web designers often use things like absolute positioning and such to make the web page look closer to the photoshop design. In a component based scenario CSS should work more independent of the surrounding markup. I think this way will become more popular but a lot of web designers have problems in getting it right. > > So to me the decision is where you are aiming at. If you don't have that much customers and therefor cannot chose which one you take it seems possible there will be a lot of customers of the "presentation" type. Taking seaside for this kind of development could cause you more pain than it gives you benefit. If you like to have customers from the "application" type than seaside can be a lot of fun. The decision to aim in that direction is indeed feasible. There are not that many web developing companies that are capable of doing complex web apps. And in my opinion this will grow. > I don't know what avi said and why javascript lowers the need for seaside. But in my opinion you can focus on the server in a relaxed fashion as long as the majority of browsers support ECMAScript-262 and not ECMAScript 5. One reason for this is that javascript does not have any security model and HTML has only cross domain security. So at the minimum you realize security issues over the server, etc. > > hope that helps, > > Norbert > > Am 08.04.2011 um 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? >> >> What I am wondering is should I learn Seaside and then attempt to sell my web >> development services in Calgary? My impression is that: >> 1) No one in Calgary has ever heard of Seaside so selling my services >> would be difficult. >> 2) Since I should be able to develop web sites faster using Seaside I >> should be able to >> offer my services at a discount and hopefully be able to find >> business that way. But >> since no one but myself (at least locally) would be able to >> maintain the web sites, >> potential customers are going to be very shy. >> 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 >> _______________________________________________ >> seaside mailing list >> [hidden email] >> http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/seaside > _______________________________________________ > seaside mailing list > [hidden email] > http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/seaside > _______________________________________________ seaside mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/seaside |
Re: Should I become a Seasider?
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In reply to this post by Sven Van Caekenberghe
On 09 Apr 2011, at 10:25, Sven Van Caekenberghe wrote: > Thanks for sharing all this! Sven, From what I have seen, you guys at beta9 are doing great with Smalltalk as well. Relative to the size of the country and the size of the Smalltalk community in the world, there is a lot of Smalltalk being done in Belgium. Looking forward to seeing you at the Pharo sprint in Brussels! Johan_______________________________________________ seaside mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/seaside |
Re: Should I become a Seasider?
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In reply to this post by Daniel Lyons
Hello,
Interesting thread. I really wonder with this: 2011/4/9 Daniel Lyons <[hidden email]>
Seaside is slower than PHP. Is this really thruth? How you compare? _______________________________________________ seaside mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/seaside |
RE: Should I become a Seasider?
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If you’re really focusing on abstract and undefined value of “performance”, you’re asking wrong kinds of questions. Seaside is _quick enough_ for most kinds of applications if/when used correctly, and some Smalltalk VMs like VisualWorks or Cog are pretty darn quick in and of themselves. Hope this helps, -Boris From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Denis Kudriashov Hello, 2011/4/9 Daniel Lyons <[hidden email]> Seaside is slower than PHP.
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In reply to this post by Daniel Lyons
2011/4/9 Daniel Lyons <[hidden email]>:
>> 2) Which version(s) of Smalltalk should I use? >> I know Squeak and have used Visualworks in the distant past. > > Use Pharo. > This is not really the only option, Seaside 3 works perfectly on Squeak also and Pharo/Squeak, Squeak/Pharo is more a matter of personal preference that of technical questions, at this level of use. Cheers. _______________________________________________ seaside mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/seaside |
Re: Should I become a Seasider?
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In reply to this post by Ralph Boland
http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html
In this article, Paul Graham explains why he developed his web app in *lisp*! Here's one valuable snippet: "programming languages vary in power... if you have a choice of several languages, it is, all other things being equal, a mistake to program in anything but the most powerful one." HTH, Sean
Cheers,
Sean |
Re: Should I become a Seasider?
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yep, and he sold that to yahoo and he became the most influential and one of the most efficient a superangels out there in fact we consider seaside + our stuff to be our superpower On Jun 4, 2011, at 4:19 PM, Sean P. DeNigris wrote:
_______________________________________________ seaside mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/seaside |
Re: Should I become a Seasider?
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As a novice programmer I've found this thread to be especially interesting. I know a lot businesses go for the .net, c#, sql etc approach.. where does that rank on the scale and why? Hehe... just looking for opinions here.
RS From: [hidden email] Subject: Re: [Seaside] Re: Should I become a Seasider? Date: Sat, 4 Jun 2011 16:59:22 -0300 To: [hidden email] yep, and he sold that to yahoo and he became the most influential and one of the most efficient a superangels out there in fact we consider seaside + our stuff to be our superpower On Jun 4, 2011, at 4:19 PM, Sean P. DeNigris wrote:
_______________________________________________ seaside mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/seaside _______________________________________________ seaside mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/seaside |
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