Gentlemen, a call to arms!

Simon Wilcox essuu at ourshack.com
Tue Oct 17 08:01:10 BST 2006


On Mon, 16 Oct 2006, Jonathan Rockway wrote:

>
> > These are all very well but when they break[1] you're stuffed.
>
> Yup.  The advantage of Catalyst is that you can get rid of the CRUD
> framework and write things properly.  With other "frameworks", you're
> stuck with what they give you, and you end up bending your app around
> the framework.  Catalyst stays out of the way and lets you handle things
> (like a ... catalyst).  That's not quite as "fun" as watching rails or
> jifty make your forms for you, but it's what most people need in the end.

My problem is, or was, that these frameworks were touted as "get going
quick" solutions. Once installed and not working it was nigh on impossible
to work out where the breakage was occuring.

My experience, admittedly a long 10 months ago, was that these CRUD
frameworks were a distration and a dead end. I should revisit them now
that the whole landscape has matured a bit.

> Catalyst is a great platform for building other frameworks; that's why
> we have Enzyme, InstantCRUD, Reaction, etc.  (I am even brewing up a new
> framework in the back of my mind, but I'm waiting to see how the others
> pan out before I actually write it.)

I don't want to write frameworks, I want to write web applications and
right here is the key, the single biggest difference between the rails
camp and the catalyst camp. Rails is an emergent framework being evolved
through the development of real world applications. Catalyst, although
there are obviously sites being built with it, has the feel of a project
that exists as a solution in search of a problem.

I'm no rails fan-boy, much of it is crufty and solution specific, much
like php actually and a by-product of the way it's being developed, but
they are being successful with it.

I don't think Catalyst wants to be successful in that way but that's a
very perlish attitude and we should probably commend it for that :-)

Simon.

-- 
"So cool it would fluster a Vegan snow lizard"



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