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

[Octavian Râsnita]

From: Stuart Watt =

  > On Windows, for the most part, Perl is the easy bit. Getting it to talk=
 to some parts of Windows is a bit harder. Getting it to run to a =

  > production standard with Microsoft technology is almost unbelievably co=
mplex. It would probably be much easier with Cygwin, Apache, etc., > but th=
en, the whole point of them is to hide Windows, so that isn't really a help.

  Getting Perl to talk to some parts of Windows and get information from di=
fferent parts of Windows is very hard and it requires knowing very well the=
 low level details of Windows, which is a big disadvantage of Perl.
  Unfortunately I don't think that this situation will change.

  If we talk about "Perl" as that low level functional language that have m=
ore than 200 internal functions, and don't care about CPAN modules, we can'=
t say that it can always create portable programs, because not all those fu=
nctions work well under Windows.

  If we consider Perl with all the CPAN modules, then we also can't say tha=
t it is very portable, because there are very many CPAN modules that can't =
be installed at all under Windows, and some other CPAN modules could be ins=
talled but they are just not made very well so they can't be compiled very =
easy.

  Perl isn't good for Symbian either and it is not as good as Java for othe=
r devices, but I think that even the lack of portability is a very big issu=
e, it is not the biggest.

  I think the biggest issue is the fact that Perl with its CPAN modules are=
 very hard to install, because even if perl is installed, many CPAN modules=
 can be installed only if the user has root access and shell access, which =
in 99% of the times, it is not the case.

  Somebody asked me yesterday if I can create a web site for his small comp=
any, a little web shop which for the beginning should be very simple, no cr=
edit card payments required, and now I think that the costs involved for cr=
eating that site would be much bigger if I would use Perl and Catalyst than=
 if I would use PHP.

  There are very many sites that offer PHP and MySQL access for a few dolla=
rs per month, and for some more they can offer more other features, but for=
 using a host that offer shell access, I would need to have at least a virt=
ual server where I could have root permissions in order to be able to insta=
ll everything I need, including Catalyst and all other Perl modules, but th=
is would cost much more, so that guy might want to choose something cheaper=
 for the beginning.

  Of course that if his business will succeed, he might want to add new fea=
tures to his site, and he might need to have even a dedicated server, but i=
n that moment I doubt that he will decide to go for a Perl solution and aba=
ndon PHP.

  If Perl would offer a solution of deploying the Catalyst apps without nee=
ding to install anything with a root or shell access, using PAR or somethin=
g else, Perl would have a much bigger success.

  Octavian
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