[Catalyst-dev] Opinionation

[John Napiorkowski]

As a developer I'm all for following the standard Perl model of letting people try different things and slowly settle on a best way until a better way comes up :)  However as manager who is trying to sell Perl to clients who are used to seeing Java Certified this and .Net Certified that and hire talent that doesn't need months of training on how we build applications in this shop I would enjoy fewer choices in best practices.

So I want my cake and to eat it as well.

My guess here is that at some point there will be a cleaning separation between a development Catalyst with experimental features and a stable catalyst that only gets bug and security fixes and minor feature changes.  Also I am guessing some of the bigger choices will start to settle.  Like I think the ORM of choice is DBIx::Class.  Many people seem to be gravitating toward HTML::Widget for form creation and validation, although personally it's not my choice.  Same thing with Template Toolkit as a view.  TT is great but I prefer Petal since it offers less features (strangely enough) and plays more nicely with standard designer tools like Dreamweaver.  However more Perl programmers are familiar with TT so I use that instead.  It's one of those classic Developer/Manager dilemmas I guess.

To answer your question about, "Do whatever makes most sense within the design of *your* application" being a good approach I would only add that applications tend to fall into catagories and there is probably a best practice approach for each category.  An approach that blends pragmatism and idealism.  For myself I am still trying to figure out these categories and using Catalyst as much as I can get my clients to accept it.

--john


----- Original Message ----
From: Matt S Trout <dbix-class at trout.me.uk>
To: Development of the elegant MVC web framework <catalyst-dev at lists.rawmode.org>
Sent: Tuesday, July 4, 2006 10:59:36 AM
Subject: [Catalyst-dev] Opinionation

People have for quite a while suggested that we should be more opinionated, 
that we should guide people down a "One True Way". and lots of other people 
have said "no, that's a bad idea" for all the obvious reasons.

And they're all Catalyst users and they're all presumably enjoying using it. 
So why do we have this big dividing line that we've argued back and forth over 
on the list almost as many times as config file formats.

I think I might have finally figured out the answer:

Catalyst has a One True Way.

"Do whatever makes most sense within the design of *your* application"

Am I on crack? If so, is it good crack? ;)

-- 
      Matt S Trout       Offering custom development, consultancy and support
   Technical Director    contracts for Catalyst, DBIx::Class and BAST. Contact
Shadowcat Systems Ltd.  mst (at) shadowcatsystems.co.uk for more information

+ Help us build a better perl ORM: http://dbix-class.shadowcatsystems.co.uk/ +

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