[Catalyst] Why scaffolding? Validation and Learning

[Max Afonov]

There's that, and there's also the ease of prototyping an application 
really, really fast when scaffolding is available. Without such 
scaffolding, you may end up taking a month to build a prototype. It 
certainly depends on the complexity of the project, however, speed may 
be more important in some cases. I am mostly referring to being able to 
say "I can show you something right now" to your manager/client/etc. 
Stuff like this really raises your level of credibility.

Another thought: is catalyst.pl not a form of scaffolding already? We 
don't create our application skeletons from scratch with our bare hands. 
Even the wisest samurai would never resort to such activity.

Not meaning to start a holy war,

--
Max Afonov
Perl developer
MLB Advanced Media

Zbigniew Lukasiak wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> First I hope Matt shall excuse me for restarting the discussion here - 
> but I'd like to  reach more Catalyst users then the limited number of 
> IRC dwellers.
>
> I would like you to imagine you in the position of a developer that 
> has some idea for a web project, thinking about trying a new web 
> programming framework.  There are many to choose from, or he can also 
> go the simple way and use CGI.pm or develop something for his own - 
> how would you decide?  Every framework is lots of code, lots of 
> documentation so it's not an easy task. After reading those mountains 
> of manuals you can discover that some limitations make the framework 
> not really fitting to your project (some related thoughts in 
> http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=8826). This is that 
> risk that scaffolding mitigates - you generate your application with 
> minimal effort and you have a working example tailored to your 
> database schema. You don't need to think if a example from the manual 
> can be adopted to your data structures - you have it adopted 
> automatically.  This is the first advantage of scaffolding - easy 
> evaluation.
>
> The other important advantage is that it helps in the learning 
> process.  You get a non trivial working example.  And again this 
> example is based on your database schema - from the starting point you 
> at once know much about the program.  You don't need to internalize 
> some the business rules of some unfamiliar application - the business 
> rules are yours - so at once you can start and play with it.  And a 
> good scaffolding will give you much space for simple but meaningful 
> modifications to tweak and play with.
>
> Of course there are also disadvantages to code generation. It is 
> impossible to come with a good schema to update the generated code 
> when you release a new version of the generator and we don't want the 
> programmers who use the scaffolding to be stuck forever to the version 
> that they used the first time.  One solution can be to limit the code 
> generator to really most trivial part and move all other logic into 
> traditional libraries that just happen to cooperate with the generated 
> code - and this is what I try to do with InstantCRUD.
>
> -- 
> Zbigniew Lukasiak
> http://brudnopis.blogspot.com/
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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