[Catalyst] Catalyst Selling Points

[David K Storrs]

On Dec 27, 2005, at 2:48 PM, Marlon Bailey wrote:

>> Exactly. Right now Catalyst, as useful as it is, is being  
>> *marketed* to hobbyist programmers and programmers with a bit of  
>> spare time who have a little project they want done. There's  
>> nothing wrong with that, but if you want things like O'Reilly  
>> books there needs to be a market for them, and that market is  
>> largely companies with book- buying budgets. And *maintenance  
>> cost* -- which means automated testing and code reuse -- is  
>> critical to this market. Sure, CPAN and automated testing are not  
>> exclusive to Catalyst, but pushing them to this market will get  
>> Catalyst adopted a whole lot faster than pushing "80% of your  
>> application within an hour!" Charlton
>
> I think you're taking the statement used by whoever said "80% of  
> your application within an hour(I believe it was 30 minutes)!"

That would be me.

> out of context.  He was saying it in relation to quick start  
> documentation; documentation apps are usually not very complex.  I  
> don't think he/she meant to say that you could do all of your apps  
> in X time.

No, I very much didn't.  The point was that, in 30-60 mins you could  
get the things that are basic to almost all webapps:

	- user login
	- different access levels of users
	- CRUD interface for managing content
	- connection to a database
	- etc...

I would say that these "standard" functions account for about 80% of  
the bullet points on a features list for a webapp, so it makes sense  
to automate their production.  That doesn't mean that the remaining  
20% (i.e., all the business logic) is going to be produced quickly;  
it just means that you don't have to write the standard stuff /as  
well as/ your business logic.  That's all I've been saying.


> And I agree with that approach and mentality for quick start  
> documentation, now if you feel that a quickstart app should be more  
> complex and take days then we can agree to disagree on that.

Thank you.


Charlton, I think we may be getting into the point of diminishing  
returns from these discussions of 80% / 20%.  I've already agreed  
with you that we shouldn't use that measurement as a slogan, because-- 
as you rightly pointed out--PHBs will misunderstand what it means and  
think that it's a promise that the REST of the app will be produced  
as quickly.  So, let me instead ask--do you have specific ideas about  
what we might say?  You mention CPAN and automated testing--what  
exactly are you thinking of?  If you'd like to slap some examples up  
on this mailing list, or onto the wiki, maybe we could riff on that a  
bit.


I also have a question for the general crowd.  I really appreciate  
that Gavin is setting up a svn repository and has decided to put  
together DocBook for us, but I'm wondering what advantage it gives us  
over the wiki?  Granted, documentation on the wiki has not been  
driving forward, but I have to think that things are not going to be  
improved by raising the barriers to entry.

And, because asking that question without actually doing anything  
makes me a whiner, here's my promise:  I'm packing tonight and  
travelling tomorrow but, by this weekend, I will put up chapter  
outlines for a QuickStart and Complete Reference manual on the wiki  
and start to flesh them out...unless someone else beats me to it, in  
which case I'll just work with what they put up.


--Dks