“The Java community has used JavaServer Pages technology through most of the last decade, but signs of rust are starting to show. Longstanding conventions inhibit Java programmers from using Java code within Web pages now, and extending even simple components is a chore. Frameworks that take Java Web development beyond JSP programming have emerged, but they fall short of dynamic languages’ capabilities. This article shows you Ruby’s Web page development strategy and touches on Seaside’s radical approach.”
I was not dissuaded from the servlet/xml/xslt/cocoon path. Is it me or is it not so object oriented to just say puts(string)? That assume some sort of system object? Why is that better than the perl or tcl server side parsing shtml of the past? Mixing code and presentation would not seem to be a real quantum leap forward.
ruby and jsp and not really the same market
The problem with JSP, ASP, PHP,… is not the programming language behind them. The problem is lack of separation between application logic and presentation. This ruby template thing doesn’t help much here.
A better way to go would be TAL (Template Attribute Language) where you make templates that can be read and viewed in ordinary html tools. The big advantage here is that it is possible to build mock ups, in pure HTML. That way they can be shown to a customer, and if it looks ok it is simple bind the mockup to objects in the application logic part of the application by adding some extra attributes from the tal namespace to the HTML tags.
TAL was originally developed as a template language for Zope and python, but are now available for PHP and Java as well. Using something that is general and works the same way with many languages seams to be much better choise if you are going to learn something new.