[Catalyst] Re: Catalyst site design drafts feedback thread

[Jonathan Rockway]

* On Fri, Jun 13 2008, Jonathan Tweed wrote:
> On 13 Jun 2008, at 13:51, Jonathan Rockway wrote:
>
>> It all boils down to this.  Catalyst is the only really useful Perl
>> web
>> framework.  Perl is the only really useful language for writing web
>> applications.  So people are going to use Catalyst regardless of
>> whether
>> the background color on the website is #83f8e2 or #85f9ff.
>
> I think you're missing an 'if you only know Perl'.
>
> Otherwise you're just talking shit ;-)

I'll bite.  

I've written web applications in Java, PHP, Cold Fusion, Common Lisp,
Haskell, and OCaml.  None of these languages have anywhere near the
number of libraries that Perl does, and as a result I either waste time
reimplementing something trivial-but-tedious, or I settle for half-assed
solutions.  Java is close, but the syntax is so tedious it's hard to pay
attention to the libraries.  (PHP and CF aren't real programming
languages, so it's not a surprise that there are no libraries.)

The Python, Ruby, and Common Lisp communities all share the attitude
towards libraries -- if it works for the author, it's perfect; as a
result most of the libraries are half-assed special cases that may or
may not be helpful.  I don't know how Perl escaped this, but it
did... most module authors feel obligated to make something generally
useful.  (Of course there's a lot of junk, but that's fine; nobody uses
the junk libraries.)

It's a real shame that Lisp doesn't have Perl's libraries, 'cause I
really like it a lot better than Perl.  It's just that it's not useful
for anything.  (Emacs Lisp is the exception; not that great of a
programming language, but you can do anything in about 5 lines of code
thanks to the extensive libraries.  But I digress.)

Regards,
Jonathan Rockway

-- 
print just => another => perl => hacker => if $,=$"