[Catalyst] RFC: The paradox of choice in web development

[Jay Kuri]

I've been watching this discussion and I have ranted my less than  
constructive ravings in #catalyst.

My more constructive ravings are below...

First:  Perl jobs are not decreasing.  While there is not a ton of  
'Buzz' around perl anymore... If you look at actual jobs stats:

http://tiny.cc/kkcCM

(or http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=+perl+engineer%2C+perl+developer%2C+php+engineer%2C+php+developer%2C+ruby+developer%2C+python+developer%2C+&l= 
  )

Perl is above all the others by some margin.   It's hard to see all  
these other languages getting the buzz, when the one we all love is  
practically ignored in the press... but that doesn't make it any less  
good and though it's hard to tell right now,  buzz does not equal real  
world usage.

There are two problems I see, really.  One problem I think David  
points out correctly... there is precious little 'easily accessible'  
means to learn about catalyst and what the conventional 'preferred'  
pieces are... so those that learn it are those that really need it's  
power, and have come searching for it.  Those that are just trying to  
pick something and go will piss off to some more spoonfeed-easy-to- 
learn framework.

I'm not convinced that's a bad thing.  The second problem I see is  
that we don't seem to know who we want to market Catalyst to.  We look  
over and see Rails and Django getting a lot of press and raves and  
such, and think 'I want to go to there.'

Overall, though, I think that most of us who have used Catalyst for  
any period of time know that it is not a beginners platform.  It is a  
powerful set of tools to solve difficult and complex problems.

I think we need to take a page out of the old Unix'ers handbook.    
Stop looking to be as accessible to newbies as the other options, and  
embrace our true position... which is simply Catalyst is better.  Not  
because it's easier to learn, and certainly not because it forces you  
into one (easy or not) way of doing things.... but because you can  
bend it to whatever form you need to solve whatever problem you have,  
even the ones that are less computer science-y and more computer-room- 
in-the-office-y.  (though we can certainly do the former as well)

In my opinion, we should embrace the fact that Catalyst is bigger,  
more complex, and more able.  When someone says 'well, Why isn't  
catalyst as clear-cut and simple to use like Rails?'  we should  
encourage them... tell them 'Go... Go play with rails... and when you  
grow out of it, we'll be waiting for you.'

We should position Catalyst as the big-sister framework, the one whose  
there for you when you are ready to take on big problems that can't be  
solved by a bit of automatic CRUD, the ones that can't be stuffed into  
the channels that someone else has already dug.   We should  
communicate an attitude of 'yes, we can solve easy problems too, but  
we are particularly good at solving the harder ones.'

The fact is that Oracle does not try to compete for the low end of the  
market with MySQL.  They don't want it.  They never did.  Why do we?

Jay


On Feb 13, 2009, at 4:37 PM, Octavian Râsnita wrote:

> I also agree with Dan.
>
> Catalyst tries to solve that problem in the RoR way - it offers a  
> default ORM, a default template in its manual, but there are much  
> more other perl tools which are not defined as the recommended ones.
>
> For example, HTML::FormFu is a very good form manager, but it  
> doesn't create (yet) the javascript code for client-side validation.  
> Instead of improving this form manager only (if it is the considered  
> the best) to also create the JS code, other similar modules are  
> improved, so finally becomes harder and harder to choose which is  
> the best one, but none of them would be perfect.
>
> So finally the programmers might prefer to move to RoR or Django or  
> something else, because it is prefered to eat a medium-good apple,  
> than to find a very good apple after trying tens of bad-taste apples.
>
> Unfortunately I don't know if there is a solution for this, but less  
> perl sites means that the demand for perl programmers is lower and  
> lower each year, and this is one more reason for programmers of not  
> beeing interested in perl.
>
> Octavian
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Steiner" <tw03d034 at technikum-wien.at 
> >
> To: <catalyst at lists.scsys.co.uk>
> Sent: Saturday, February 14, 2009 12:01 AM
> Subject: [Catalyst] RFC: The paradox of choice in web development
>
>
>> Hi there,
>>
>> here's an interesting article that dandv (from #catalyst) has  
>> posted on his
>> wiki [1]. it explains how TMTOWTDI can be bad for people starting  
>> out in
>> catalyst, and how compareable webframeworks (RoR/Django) deal with  
>> this.
>>
>> [1] http://wiki.dandascalescu.com/essays/paradox-of-choice-in-web-development
>>
>> i added my comments to the article, suggesting that we step up on the
>> documentation and marketing! we need to give the layperson a easier  
>> ride in
>> starting out with catalyst. and that requires more tutorials/ 
>> screencasts,
>> better official documentation, and more books being written. tell  
>> me what you
>> people think of the article and how we can get catalyst more used  
>> and known.
>>
>> Greetings,
>> David
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>
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