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

[Octavian Râsnita]

From: "Jay Kuri" <jayk at ion0.com>
> 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.

In my country there are no jobs for perl developers. There are jobs for 
Java, C#, C++ and PHp developers.
The knowledge of perl is considered as an advantage in very few job 
announcements, but it is wanted mostly for administrative tasks, not for web 
development, and there are very few programmers that even heard about 
Catalyst.
Maybe that's why I wrongly thought that this is the same in other countries.

> 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.'

If we want to compete for the niche of big sites, we should see why Google, 
Yahoo, Amazon, Ebay and other big sites like these don't use Catalyst, what 
they are using and why.
Maybe they also have some reasons, because I guess they have developers that 
know very well about all the possible options.

Catalyst shouldn't compete for the low end sites not because it wouldn't be 
nice, or because Catalyst can't be used for simple web apps, but because it 
uses perl and it requires shell access to install it and third party 
modules, and this option is not available for most low end sites, so it is 
not an option for everyone.

> 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?

The comparison is good, but not very exact. I know companies which don't use 
PostgreSQL but Oracle, because Oracle is better known (because it offers 
discounts to the software companies that distribute it, so they have the 
interest of promoting it), and because Oracle offers tech support.
The big companies usually want to pass the responsability to others, even if 
they need to pay some more.

Octavian