Recently, I decided there was something of a hole in my programming toolbox – a good tool to develop websites. Now I want to change that so I have a number of options. I’ll group them into three main categories.
- Choose a framework that works for one of the languages I know already, e.g. Catalyst
- Choose a framework for another language, e.g. Rails or Django
- Choose a tool that is specifically designed for the web, e.g. Seaside, GWT or HaXe
For various reasons, I like option 3, and as I’m not interested in Java, it comes down to a choice between Squeak/Seaside or HaXe. This puts me in the unenviable position of making a choice between two technologies I know almost nothing about. Let me try and enumerate the pros and cons that I’m aware of at my superficial level of understanding.
Seaside positives
- HTML/CSS generation using Smalltalk only
- Better debugging
- Image development – install pain is a thing of the past
Seaside negatives
- Squeak is difficult to integrate with C.
- Documentation is not as good as HaXe
HaXe positives
- Language looks more familiar
- Relatively bigger community
- There is going to be a book available soon
- Seems to be improving rapidly (in comparison with Seaside)
- Integrates with C
HaXe negatives
- You still need to write HTML/CSS (I think)
- Not quite so easy to install
The big points here are obviously the integrates with C – e.g. if I want to use a Sqlite (ignoring the single-threaded blocking FFI version) or Sybase library then I have a lot of work to do. On the other hand:
- I’m not sure I’ll ever need that functionality
- even if I do, there are ways around it.
- I love the idea of not writing HTML/CSS directly.
I think I’m going to go with Seaside and keep HaXe as backup.
Update: Looks like you do still need to know/write some amount of CSS which weakens my primary reason for choosing Seaside over HaXe.
What about uncommon web? Gives you the whole power of Common Lisp and, I think, it has a reasonably large community. I could be wrong though. It has some very nice features that makes developing web applications more like developing desktop applications.
http://common-lisp.net/project/ucw/index.html
And here’s a video: http://bc.tech.coop/blog/050727.html
Judging by the mailing list, the Uncommon Web (UCW) community looks much smaller or less active than either the HaXe community or the Seaside community. The last three months, the mailing list had 22, 23 and 18 messages. Compare that to HaXe which had 474, 604 and 667. Even at peak, the UCW mailing list (which it shares with another project) had 176 messages back in April 2006. Perhaps interest in it is dropping off?
Go for Seaside, it’s built upon Smalltalk rather than some custom ActionScript’ish like custom language found only in one framework.
Hi Ramon,
Smalltalk is less familiar to me than Javascript / Actionscript so this would be a (minor) negative.
I have decided to go with Seaside for the time being, although not for the reason you mention
Cheers,
Ian
Hi,
I would be interested if you’re still using Seaside and what your thoughts are about HaXe, GWT, and Seaside now.