[Catalyst] "Catalyst - The Definitive Guide" and the "Catalyst Cookbook"

[Sean Davis]

On 12/22/05 2:16 PM, "Charlton Wilbur" <cwilbur at tortus.com> wrote:

> On Dec 22, 2005, at 11:13 AM, David K Storrs wrote:
> 
>> I would suggest dividing the book into two sections:  quick start
>> and Everything There Is To Know.  The quick start section should be
>> just that--a heavily emphasized section right at the front that
>> says "Here is what you need to know to have your app running and
>> doing useful things in 4 minutes, and doing 80% of what you need it
>> to do in 30 minutes."
> 
> I'd like to strongly caution against this sort of hyperbolic time
> estimate, because it's the sort of thing that registers with pointy-
> haired bosses and buzzword fanatics and is impossible to get un-
> registered.
> 
> I'm dealing with a client right now who has a complicated, finicky,
> inconsistent, and ever-changing business model.  I'm the programmer
> on the team that's putting his website together.  The *last* thing I
> want to impinge on his consciousness is "doing 80% of what you need
> your app to do in 30 minutes."  I couldn't put together the database
> definition for his business model in 30 minutes, let alone get his
> application running; in fact, the most difficult part of this whole
> thing has not been programming but in wringing the business rules out
> of him and getting him to make at least tentative decisions about his
> business model.
> 
> Mind you, I think it's *great* that Catalyst lets me focus on the
> problem domain and on client management rather than on the web fiddly
> bits.  I'd just prefer to not have to deal with upset clients who
> read somewhere that an entire web application could be 80% done
> within 30 minutes, which means that it could be well past done within
> an hour, and they're paying for two hours of my time so it had better
> be perfect.
> 
> And Catalyst has several selling points beyond "you can get a toy app
> running inside of an hour"; why not emphasize some of those as well
> ("using an MVC framework means you aren't tied to the web, and can
> automate things without any less power"; "we have CPAN"; "object-
> oriented development means you can modularize and unit-test
> everything to help catch bugs"; or the one I'd like to see, "we make
> AJAX in Perl painless for the developer and reliably cross-
> platform"), to catch the attention of people who aren't working on
> small applications?

I couldn't agree more here.  Again, this comes back to what the audience is
and from where that audience is starting.  Toy examples are nice for folks
and good candy, but for many folks hoping to use Catalyst, the model isn't
available, TT is totally foreign, and even object oriented programming is
new.  So, while I think it is great to provide a step-by-step for producing
a toy example, it probably doesn't do anyone much of a service to imply that
producing a working app has ANY timeframe associated with it in an absolute
sense.  The design and development cycle will likely be RELATIVELY faster
than with many other frameworks, but there isn't any ABSOLUTE timeframe at
all.  The thought process in the message applies equally well to the
individual programmer as well as to his/her employer....

Sean