Continuations Based Web Framework - Seaside.

[Kendall Clark]

On Sun, Jan 02, 2005 at 10:03:10AM -0500, 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. 

That was me, actually. I remain surprised that there isn't a move
afoot either to implement something like Seaside or Borges in Python
or to adapt one of the existing web frameworks to be
modal/continuation style.

Between this pressure (which isn't new, since as Steve points out, I
was talking about this in Python community last year, and I wasn't
nearly the first) and the growing popularity of Ruby on Rails, there's
some small hint that Ruby is gaining on Python re: non-Java web app
mind share. I think that's a v. important niche for Python and would
like to see us remain strong there (though I've not *done* much about
this, alas).

> 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'd still like to publish a piece on XML.com about modal web app
style, preferably with a Python example, though Borges would be fine.

Best,
Kendall Clark
XML.com Managing Editor