Seaside: A Radical Web Framework

We've been writing web applications now for 10 years, and they're still no fun. They're awkward and clumsy to write. Internally, they're overly complicated (which almost invariably means that they're buggy). Meanwhile, they're usually too primitive externally. To put it another way: the web programming model is so cumbersome for programmers that the users pay—through reduced features, clumsy interaction, bugs, and poor performance. There's a better way. I know – who needs another web framework? But Seaside makes even Rails look primitive.

Seaside represents a new generation of web frameworks. Using it, web development is simple. A little code goes a long way. The code is simple and clear. There are powerful development tools that magnify your productivity. You can focus on making your web application good rather than having to strive with all your might just to make it work. It might not be perfect for your situation—it's written in Smalltalk, for one thing, which presents a barrier to adoption in many organizations. And it's not quite as scalable as more traditional web frameworks. But for most applications, it would drastically reduce the development effort while also increasing the usefulness and robustness of the application.

Sound too good to be true? Yeah, I thought so too. But it is true. In this talk, we'll see an extended demo of Seaside, and all the things that make it special. We'll discuss how it works, as well as its limitations. Finally, we'll look at other frameworks that are trying to bring the same ideas and techniques to other languages. Whether you try Seaside or not, a better way of developing web applications is in your future, and Seaside is showing the way.

About Glenn Vanderburg

Glenn Vanderburg is a principal at Relevance, where he is focused on cutting-edge software development technologies and techniques. He brings more than 20 years of experience developing software across a wide range of domains, and using a variety of tools and technologies. Glenn is always searching for ways to improve the state of software development, and was an early adopter and proponent of Ruby, Rails, and agile practices.

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