[Catalyst] Last Chance / Last Day: Web developmentplatformcontestand Perl / Catalyst

[Sebastian Riedel]

Tobias Kremer wrote:
> Today I was in a meeting with one of Germany's top twenty
> internet agencies to speak about the future of our (home-brewed Perl-based)
> community app. I spoke to the person in charge of technology who
> of course tried to persuade me that Java and .Net/C# is the
> way to go. Even worse, he was convinced that Perl has no object-
> orientation features at all! He was surprised when I told him
> about the CPAN and Perl's flexible object capabilities.
> Unfortunately this is not an isolated case.
>   
Yes, thats quite common sadly and caused only by lack of marketing.
> One of Germany's most successful web portals serving several
> hundred million page impressions per month with Perl recently
> started hiring Java developers.
>   
It's so absurd when you think about it, from script language back to 
compiled mess?
The opposite should be the case!

We really have to start learning from the Ruby folks,
take a look at these two books, it's pure marketing genius.

    From Java To Ruby: Things Every Manager Should Know 
(http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/fr_j2r/index.html)
    Rails For Java Developers 
(http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/fr_r4j/index.html)

> I hate to say this, but Perl is really lacking some sort of marketing.
> To my mind Catalyst could be the new killer-app that has the potential to
> resurrect our favorite language. But not if we can't get the word out.
> This is really frustrating. Catalyst's website is one big mess. Go to
> the wiki section and you get gazillions of links on one page. Click on
> documentation and you receive ugly POD pages. This is just not up to
> standards set by other frameworks. Don't get me wrong: The content and
> documentation is better than most other frameworks but the presentation
> just sucks. I recently met another fellow perl dude and we're currently
> brainstorming what has to change to make Perl and the Catalyst project
> more appealing to the average CTO, technical lead, dude-who-is-in-charge-
> but-thinks-perl-is-dead :)
I completely agree, but you don't get (good) marketing for free,
a company or The Perl Foundation would have to invest money in it.

Take a look at Java, PHP and Ruby, all the marketing initiatives can be 
traced back to a few smart companies.

(Please take a few minutes and think about it before flaming me, thanks)
> P.S. I read that the upcoming issue of the iX magazine will feature an
> article about web development with Catalyst ...
>   
Just seen that too, will be fun to read. 
(http://www.heise.de/ix/vorschau.shtml) :)

--
sebastian