The responses so far have been dead on. I want to go in a different direction and address which areas of Seam do have a learning curve.
First and foremost I would identify JSF as a hurdle for those getting started. JSF was intended to have a small learning curve and be easy for new developers to pick up. The reality is that it suffers from
leaky abstraction and therefore ends up being more complex than some alternatives. Fortunately, Seam eliminates most of these quirks and therefore brings the learning curve of JSF back down to an acceptable level. To go a step further, the Seam project members are working closely with the JSF EG to make JSF 2.0 much more attractive to new developers.
The second challenge is learning how to manage conversations effectively. Conversations are one of the crowning features in Seam and definitely give it the leg up over alternatives. But it isn't always obvious where to put the boundaries of your conversation, which turns out to be a good thing because it actually gets you thinking about what you want your application to do from a business perspective, rather than being tangled in a technical concern. How long do you want to keep the user's selections in memory? Is there a navigation path that you want to enforce? While it may seem annoying to have to answer these questions, these are the real application concerns that you are being paid to address. Isn't it annoying that a framework actually makes you think about what you want to create? Not at all.
Finally, bijection is a new paradigm that you have to understand. Fortunately for you, I go into tremendous detail about bijection, how it works, and what to expect from it in chapter 6 of Seam in Action. I can assure you that if you spend one night reading chapter 6, you will have bijection down cold and will be using it effectively the very next day.
All technologies are going to have a learning curve. The real question becomes, is there a guide to get you from greenhorn to expert? I hope that Seam in Action is that guide and many of my readers will attest to the fact that it is that guide. Don't take my
word for it. Ask them.
[ October 08, 2008: Message edited by: Dan Allen ]
[ October 08, 2008: Message edited by: Dan Allen ]
[ October 08, 2008: Message edited by: Dan Allen ]