[Catalyst] TT observations

[Brandon Black]

On 11/16/05, John Wang <johncwang at gmail.com> wrote:
> I recently started using TT after reading the excellent mailing list thread
> comparing TT to HTML::Template. I was initially skeptical because I had come
> from using CGI::Application and H::T and saw no reason to replace H::T. Now
> I know better. I've put together my impressions in a CPAN review:
>
>  http://cpanratings.perl.org/user/Conundrum
>
>  Given that Catalyst / Perl have a TIMTOWTDI approach, would it be useful to
> have some Wiki articles that discuss the pros and cons of various component
> choices?
>

I've written a *lot* of CGI stuff over the past 11 years or so, mostly
in perl.  And having started so early, all along I've always resisted
the latest methods and preferred rolling my own solutions that only
abstracted as much as I needed at the moment.  Even in my most recent
projects, the most I really used from CPAN for directly CGI-related
stuff was CGI::Simple + HTML::Template (and then rolled my own auth,
session, etc according to my standard patterns, and doing ajax-like
stuff manually, etc).  I was even using plain old DBI and building
little libraries of hardcoded SQL statements for the apps.  I'm
extremely stubborn and like re-inventing wheels, I guess.

But Catalyst has changed my whole outlook (perhaps because someone
brought all the peices together in a really nice and relatively
intuitive way for once - every time I started to look at some of the
previous perl all-in-wonder web toolkits, I ended up just walking away
from it without every really trying it), and now  I'm all Catalyst +
TT + DBIx::Class (I'm still rolling my own session/auth code though,
you can't win em all (but it is a Catalyst Plugin)).

There's always MTOWTDI, but IMHO, Catalyst really shines a bright
spotlight on a really small set of ways that are obviously superior to
most.

-- Brandon