Aida/Web on Smalltalk Solutions 2008

We had two presentations on Smalltalk Solutions conference in Reno, USA. First was about Aida/Web applications in Healthcare by Rob Rothwell and second about Aida/Scribo by Michael Rueger. Michael reports that presentations were successful and that quite some people expressed interest and support for Aida/Scribo.

Here are reports from both Michael and Rob, with slides and soon video:

Report by Michael:

Sitting at the airport on my way back from Smalltalk Solutions, writing a few notes about the AIDA presentation(s) there.

First on was by Rob Rothwell, mainly about the business side of his work, but he also short a quick glance at his work done in AIDA. I somehow managed to miss the first half of the talk, but enjoyed it a lot and think it was well received. Interesting side note was that health care providers in a dire need for new, innovative tools to deal with the daily documentation and data madness and are increasingly looking into Smalltalk.

The talk about AIDA/Scribo was on Saturday morning. Rob assisted, as I myself am not an AIDA expert (yet). Janko provided the slides and Nicolas a screen cast helping me with figuring out a demo and a Scribo demo image.

We managed to avoid to get into any Seaside/AIDA comparison discussions. Rob and I weren't quite sure how we would fare within this sea of Seaside excitement, but some people from audience expressed their interest and support for AIDA, so I guess it went well! :-)

As preparing for the presentation was the first time I had a chance to apply with Scribo, I must say that I'm impressed! Good work! What would give Scribo a good start for adoption would be a decent set of scriblets and/or good documentation how write and integrate Scriblets.

(Slides of Michael's Aida/Scribo presentation)

(Audio (12M mp3) and Video (300M mp4), also on Google Video)

Report by Rob: sts

Primarily, Monty Williams of Gemstone and I talked about getting with Janko to get an Aida page or something on the GLASS site. It was kind of strange to be an "Aida expert" given all the questions I ask! Anyway...lots to look into there. The most interesting question asked during the Scribo presentation was how hard it would be to teach Aida to use a Seaside component somehow, in the context of using whichever tool might best suit the problem you are working on but not sacrificing other components you might have created. Just some food for thought...

Like Michael said, the Seaside enthusiasm is, pun intended, at "high tide." Continuation seem to be a key point, as well as a straight rendering of html within the framework so that your code "looks" like the page. The big thing that I think is interesting is the "call:" feature, which calls a component and returns to where it came from, complete with returning a complex object as needed. I can see that this could be useful.

To be straight-up honest, though, there are some definite Seaside evangelists out there who know who they are that have a LOT of energy and the desire to show EVERYONE that they NEED to be building their web applications in Seaside!


More later, but first sleep (I know...it's not REALLY necessary, except when you have to drive, which is frequently in this country!)

(Slides of Rob's presentation)

 

Photos from the gallery of Adriaan van Os