the village buzz

obsessing about a new technology. a new framework, a new programming language.. or something .. it’s now time to start going OCD on something new. for the past year or so, i have spent a TON of time in the world of ruby on rails. while i totally still like ruby on rails, i have found that lately, i have been writing things that are more like web applications than web sites. i have found where alot of the limitations of javascript an rails programming are, and i would like to try out something a little different. i have narrowed it down to two candidates. i would love some input on this:

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• Seaside - this is a really neat web app framework built on squeak smalltalk. a few months ago, i read a whole bunch of the tutorials, and did a bunch of them. i spent some time getting the gist of squeak, but i really didn’t have the time to get a complete grasp on it. i was considering it for a project i was working on, but i wasn’t able to find the libraries to make it fit my needs. i finally used rails for the project. now, i would like to give seaside another shot.. doing something fun.. and learning smalltalk. not that smalltalk will be terribly transferable to other projects, but it would just be fun.
• Google Web Toolkit - this is google’s offering in the ajax arena. my only worry is that this will not interface well with a database. the other thing to consider is i haven’t worked seriously in java for four years or so. i figure i can read a book and get up to speed pretty quickly, so i am not too worried about that. i have also wanted to get back up to speed with java to learn to program the blackberry and tivo platforms. i am also totally interested in the debugging possibilities with running jruby on rails.

while i really really think the whole idea of smalltalk and seaside sound interesting as hell, i still can’t make a decision on what to obsess on next. if smalltalk/seaside catches on, i will be way ahead of the game, and have lots of fun. java is probably not going anywhere, so this would be a good option also.

what do you guys think?