If you are brand new to Java web development, Seam will appear to be confusing and terrible.

I'm new to web development, and found that coming from Client Server to the web was thoroughly depressing Once I understood the problems involved in the bigger picture of web development (multiple tab/windows, back buttons + multiple submits, state management without killing the database or the server, and decent navigation + pageflows). Once you understand these problems, you can really see how Seam was built to address them all. Seam really does find a way to make these problems transparent.

A lot of frameworks are good for Hello World, but beyond that, you are often on your own and stuck on a frustrating path. Traditional problems in other frameworks are often solved with Hacks while Seam addresses them as part of the framework (i.e. LazyInitializationException).

The Seam docs could be better at describing some things, I don't even think they have an example that demonstrates the Update part of CRUD which led to many frustrations for me, but now I've solved those problems, I find Seam wonderful to work with, and to boot it has Ajax , PDF, email and other components built in and a Seam focused IDE coming soon.

The level of integration Seam provides with each of its elements (pageflow, process flow, JSF controls, backing beans, messages, logging, persistence context management) is astounding and how frameworks should be. Not this mix and match your parts and pieces and hope it all plays nicely together.

Also, there is the productivity issue. I think Seam could beat the snot out of Rails, and you end up with an application that is far more robust and scalable out of the box. Seam-Blog in 15 minutes, no problem.

Yep, I'm a new web developer, and I'm really happy with Seam. I stuck with Delphi for 12 years since it came out, and now it looks like I've found a new object of my affection and loyalty.