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

[Jonathan Rockway]

* On Mon, Mar 10 2008, Ali M. wrote:
> Books are just a way to make money, money makers, that is exploting
> the weakness in the online documentation.

That's right.  Why should I write documentation for free when I can get
paid for it?

There's a reality here that you're not seeing.  The people that are best
qualified to write about Catalyst are also the best qualified to work on
it.  So, those people tend to write code instead of document the code.
That's because they actually benefit from writing code; they can use
their new module in their apps and enjoy the new features.  Writing
documentation gets them nothing; they already know how to use Catalyst,
so they're not helping themselves in any way.

When it comes down to having some free time, people are likely to think
"help myself" instead of "help people whining on the mailing list".

Books cost money because you're paying the person to do work that they
don't really need to do.  Would you do your day job if nobody paid you?
No, because even though it would be really helpful to your company, you
still need to pay your mortgage and occasionally buy some food.

This is the reality of the world.  There are only 24 hours in a day.  If
you want something from someone, you need to make it worth their while.

BTW, if you think a $40 is expensive, wait until you see how much
training classes cost:

  http://www.stonehenge.com/rates.html

$40 is pretty much free when you consider that paying someone to read it
to you costs $14_000.  What you call "exploiting the community", I call
"not living in poverty".

Finally, I should mention that Catalyst has supar-sekret docs (perfectly
sync'd with even the newest features) that you can read by typing:

  $ perldoc -m Catalyst

This is how I learned Catalyst.

Regards,
Jonathan Rockway