… of many things …

Rails vs. Seaside

I have started my first app in Rails at work. Though I find it’s ease of database access really appealing, I am not convinced that I find it a better suit than Seaside. There is something about programming everything in Smalltalk that is so much more appealing than figuring out “OK, what can this view see now? What does this partial know about? What does that controller have its fingers into?”

It’s killing me trying to find out the context in which everything lives. In Smalltalk I know what the context is… I can evaluate things, I can set breakpoints (OK, self halt), I can send messages to known classes — not just some digital ether.

Until next time…

[September 08, 2007]

I have since created a dozen or so Rails apps, and I gotta say I really like it. All but one are essentially quick and dirty views on databases (slicing and dicing in different ways). I prefer to use Seaside for heftier applications, but those don’t come along as frequently and it’s harder to get approval for them. Rails really answers a niche array of needs. It’s great at what it does!