Gentlemen, a call to arms!

[Ian Malpass]

Jonathan Rockway wrote:

> I'm excited about Catalyst because a lot of people are writing web
> applications these days.  You may have heard of applications like
> "Google", "delicious", "YouTube", etc., most of which are web-based.
> Web applications are where the world is heading, regardless of whether
> or not that excites you :)

I'm in the process of writing one myself. I'm using CGI::Application 
now, because I tried plugging authentication plugins into Catalyst and 
the code barfed horribly. And then, of course, I found myself stuck 
because all the "helper" applications had written a pile of code I had 
no clue about and I just couldn't get debugged. So I gave up.

(As I recall one of the entries in the Pragmatic Programmers book was 
along the lines of "beware of wizards", and this seemed to fit that one 
well.)

Now, much of the problem rests with me attempting to run before I can 
walk, not reading the various tutorials, etc., but I put together a 
functional log in/log out app with CGI::Application in no time, and it 
worked, and all the custom code that was present was written by me.

I don't mean to knock the excellent work of the Catalyst people - my 
problems with it are undoubtedly my own - but while I'm excited by the 
idea of Catalyst, the reality was a bit of a let-down :(


Ian