[Catalyst] Why scaffolding? Validation and Learning

peter at dragonstaff.com peter at dragonstaff.com
Thu Aug 17 22:08:26 CEST 2006


Dear Zby,

First off thank you for writing InstandCRUD, it made it much easier for me
to understand the Catalyst way of doing things.

I posted some comments about frameworks here:
http://lists.rawmode.org/pipermail/catalyst-dev/2006-July/000194.html

The problem with generated frameworks is shown in Visual C++ where you
generate a screen then are stuck with manual changes after because if you
go back to the meta-model and regenerate you lose code. So in that respect
I agree with what Matt is saying.

However, the problem facing most IT managers is that they have a majority
of average programmers who cannot handle more abstract design but can
handle point and click interface building based on a data source.

This competes somewhat with Catalyst's ideals to be lean, mean and not
tied to a particular One True Way. The way I see it is that you need the
core Catalyst, which is a pretty cool set of code, and a sample OTW
approach to get people started but which they can go beyond.

We're using Catalyst in a project I'm managing and I hope very much that
one of the outcomes from that will be to make it easier for other people
to use Catalyst. That is because I have tried (and failed) to pitch
Catalyst to IT customers because it's too complicated as it is now for
their staff.

Best wishes,
Peter Edwards
http://www.dragonstaff.com - Business IT Consultancy




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