[Catalyst] So, what do we want in the -next- book?

[Stephen Sykes]

Ali M. wrote:
> i completly oppose another cookbook for catalyst
>
> catalyst need an indepth book that describe its design!
> the first book was very much a learning by example book, which is
> close to a cookbook
>
> and the main complain or the bad review where that, after reading the
> book, developers still didnt not understand how catalyst work (for
> exampl how subroutines attributes are used)
>
> we need a book with diagrams that exlpain the different pieces of catalyst
>
> a cookbook maybe be easier to write, but its not what i think is needed
> a cookbook is for people who already knows catalysts, this book trend
> will make catalyst a very exclusive framework only used by perl
> experts!
>
> On Sun, Apr 27, 2008 at 3:01 AM, Ian Sillitoe <ian at sillit.com> wrote:
>   
>> So as I said - I contacted O'Reilly to request info/submit interest in a
>> Catalyst Cookbook/Best Practices. I've been in contact with a chap called
>> Andy Oram who seems to be O'Reilly's Perl Guy (FWIW he also seems a nice,
>> but very busy, guy). I was waiting for him to give me the nod before posting
>> the following thread to the mailing list...
>>
>>
>> ----
>>
>>
>> I just had a moment to reply. You can post my reply to the mailing list--I
>> do appreciate that you asked first. Results of my asking around are
>> discouraging. I will try to do some more research next week, but this is a
>> busy time for me. (I have only 6 days at home during the whole month of
>> April.)
>>
>> Andy
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Ian Sillitoe" <ian.sillitoe at googlemail.com>
>> To: "Andy Oram" <andyo at oreilly.com>
>> Sent: Thursday, April 17, 2008 4:28:34 AM (GMT-0500) America/New_York
>> Subject: Re: Catalyst Cookbook/Best Practices
>>
>> Andy,
>>
>> Thanks for getting back to me. It would obviously be nice to see
>> O'Reilly give Catalyst the full "Best Practices" treatment, however as
>> you say, a more simple "Catalyst Cookbook/Hacks" book of code snippets
>> would presumably be much easier to produce/edit and therefore more
>> likely to happen. The Catalyst POD docs are already pretty good and
>> will undoubtably continue to improve. However most Catalyst
>> developers, i.e. the people that would actually fork out money (or get
>> their employers to fork out money) to buy the book, would probably be
>> very happy just to get the interesting snippets in lots of different
>> case scenarios.
>>
>> Also, I was going to post the reply you gave on the Catalyst mailing
>> list - but it feels a bit rude without at least asking you first - any
>> objections?
>>
>> Lots of people would be really interested in any further developements
>> so if you had a chance to update me when you hear anything, I would be
>> really grateful.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Ian
>>
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From: Andy Oram <andyo at oreilly.com>
>> Date: Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 11:46 PM
>> Subject: Catalyst Cookbook/Best Practices
>> To: ian.sillitoe at googlemail.com
>>
>>
>> I just had a moment to reply to your request for a Catalyst Cookbook,
>> which was forwarded to me because I edit most of our Perl books now.
>>
>>  I appreciate your contacting us, and I'll ask the Stonehenge trainers
>> as well as the many O'Reilly employees who are heavily involved in
>> Perl development. Unfortunately, it's very hard to make money on books
>> about Web frameworks. Even the Rails market, which used to be very
>> good, is weakening.
>>
>>  Basically, the success of the open source movement makes book
>> publishing difficult. There are lots of competing frameworks and
>> languages. There are core groups of excited users for each one, but
>> rarely do they add up to a market for a book.
>>
>>  But we'll see what our Perl contacts say. The idea of bypassing the
>> tutorial and writing a cookbook is appealing.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Apr 4, 2008 at 12:46 PM, Ian Sillitoe <ian.sillitoe at googlemail.com>
>> wrote:
>>     
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, Apr 3, 2008 at 10:36 PM, Pierre Moret <pierre at sw2.ch> wrote:
>>>
>>>       
>>>> Jon wrote:
>>>>
>>>>         
>>>>> [...] Or like others have suggested, a cookbook with a large variety
>>>>>           
>> of useful examples showing "best practices" for different situations.
>>     
>>>> That's exactly what I would like to see. I got the first book (thanks!)
>>>>         
>> and would buy such a cookbook immediately.
>>     
>>> Seconded... and, like one of the previous posters, I've also added my
>>>       
>> tuppence to (proposals@) O'Reilly (.com) suggesting they get on the case.
>>     
>>>       
>> _______________________________________________
>> List: Catalyst at lists.scsys.co.uk
>> Listinfo: http://lists.scsys.co.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/catalyst
>> Searchable archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk/
>> Dev site: http://dev.catalyst.perl.org/
>>
>>
>>     
>
> _______________________________________________
> List: Catalyst at lists.scsys.co.uk
> Listinfo: http://lists.scsys.co.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/catalyst
> Searchable archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/catalyst@lists.scsys.co.uk/
> Dev site: http://dev.catalyst.perl.org/
>
>   
I tend to agree with Ali, mostly. There are plenty of cookbook type code 
snippets around for peeps to get moving; to develop/deploy decent 
applications in a relatively short period of time. Jonathan's book is 
great for this. What I would love to see is something in depth on all 
aspects of the framework design itself. A lot to ask for, no doubt.

Anyway, gotta get back to coding...going on 32 hours in 2 days. x_x

[stephen]