Continuations Based Web Framework - Seaside.

[Steve Holden]

Ian Bicking wrote:

> Steve Holden wrote:
> 
>> I did actually do some sort-of-related work in this area, which I 
>> presented at PyCon DC 2004 - you can access the paper at
>>
>>    http://www.python.org/pycon/dc2004/papers/18/Setting_A_Context.pdf
>>
>> An audience member mentioned the Smalltalk and Scheme-based work on 
>> web continuation frameworks, and I was sorry my answer at the time 
>> seemed unduly dismissive. There are some interesting similarities, and 
>> though my own implementation is decidedly clunky I like to think the 
>> paper explains some of the advantages of maintaining state and why the 
>> "back" button is an obnoxious anachronism :-)
> 
> 
> I think the technique you talked about is an easier way to achieve a 
> similar goal as the continuation-based frameworks.  While using 
> continuations for web applications is an interesting idea, I don't think 
> it's been shown to be successful.  It's certainly not something I'd want 
> to implement on Python (even given the actual features to make it 
> possible), and from what I've read of the Ruby projects that use it 
> (Borges and Wee?), they aren't ready to implement production 
> applications either.  The technique you present could be implemented on 
> any framework, right now, with the expectation that it would work in a 
> production situation.
> 
That's true, but there's no denying it's clunky, and there are a few 
problems with it. Despite that, I am still persisting with developemnt, 
albeit slowly due to lack of time, and hope to have something further to 
report.

It's the *ideas* that are important, though, rather than the 
implementation, and my initial hope was to publicise the weakness of 
statelessness on the web as applications become more complex.

regards
  Steve
-- 
Steve Holden               http://www.holdenweb.com/
Python Web Programming  http://pydish.holdenweb.com/
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