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

[Ali M.]

Kieren Diment you really seem like such a nice, tolerant and decent person.
I could buy the book "God willing" only to make you happy, seriously.

I personally think that 30$ for a nice book, it worthwhile.
Of course if you feel like buying 20 books, 20 * 30 = 600$ , well not
so nice then.

But as Kieren predicted, books and publisher will eventually have to
offer a lot more added value
to create customers. As more ppl blog and write docs  for and about
their technologies of choice
less people will be willing to pay for books.

Not to divert from the thread main topic, I believe, we are bit
ignoring the elephant in the room.
When Catalyst is not chosen I personally believe it the combination of
two things
1. Perl is no longer perceived as an easy language, or language that
make development easier.
2. Catalyst perceivably doesn't offer enough added value for
developers who are not that much into Perl
    to make the sacrifice and use Perl anyway.

Blaming it on too much choice is not really there.
New Perlers (and I consider my self one) know what the best modules are
DBIx::Class
DateTime
XML::LibXML
Catalyst,  CGI::App for starter CGI for complete beginners
Moose
HTML::FormFu
and so on ....

I want to say, that today, there seem to be a general consensus on
what the best modules are ...
New Perlers are not confused.
Those who disagree, maybe old Perlers.

I do wish to see good existing success stories about Perl in sites like
infoq, hackernews (ycombinator) and any other site that is popular
enough to spread the good word.

The community will benefit from more bloggers and success stories ....
and books :)

On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 12:58 PM, Kieren Diment <kieren at diment.org> wrote:
>
> On 17/02/2009, at 9:48 PM, Dan Dascalescu wrote:
>
>> On Sun, Feb 15, 2009 at 1:13 PM, Kieren Diment <diment at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> So the goal of the book we're writing at the moment isn't a walk-through
>>> tutorial, but a set of materials designed to get you from raw beginner
>>> through the entire catalyst learning curve as quickly as possible  - i.e.
>>> minimising the cost of the learning curve.
>>
>> I bought the first book and I'll buy this one as soon as it becomes
>> available. But there's an interesting point about writing the book at
>>
>> http://tinyurl.com/closed-books
>> eq
>>
>> http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/philosophy/closed-books-are-so-19th-century/#admission-of-failuret
>
>
> Aye, but I wouldn't have time to get things moving without the resources of
> a publisher to pay me an advance.  Plus there's the other stuff ...
> editorial, people beating you to make sure you reach deadlines etc.  Yes
> publishers are in trouble, espeically in the software sector, but no,
> they're not obsolete.
>
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