I find it ironic and unhappy-making that I’m writing about my adventures with Perl using software based on PHP.
Sadly, the Perl-based options for journal software seem limited.
Let’s do a quick “drive by” review and see what’s what at this moment in time…
I’ve been spending some time converting sites from CGI and HTML::Template to Catalyst. This has been surprisingly easy, which pleases me.
Strangely, I’m probably going to get to our site last. See: Cobbler’s Children, Shoes (none). Ah, well… c’est la guerre.
One of the core technologies used in many web sites is some kind of form handling. It’s one of the the basic ways users interact with the site. My travails so far have led me to bump into no less than four packages for Catalyst.
Those would be:
When I’m learning some new thing, if I’m lucky, there’s a bunch of documentation, tutorials, and examples I can use to get started. Once I’m marginally proficient, I like to go back and revisit those items for a variety of reasons. For example:
Generally, going back through some of the basics let’s me “fill in” some of the stuff I may have missed the first time around or “unlearn” some bad habits I may be acquiring. It also helps give me a more solid foundation and more complete understanding to build on.
I was just reading an article on The Reinvigorated Programmer about Where Dijkstra went wrong: the value of BASIC as a first programming language.
I thought this was particularly interesting:
It’s a horrible way to program, and I am delighted that I don’t have to do it any more. But it’s a fantastic exercise. It develops mental muscles that you’re going to need all through your career and which you’re not likely to develop while doing any of the more productive activities you spend time on.
That article led me to poke around a bit here: Dijkstra on Wikiquote.
(I’m Working on taxes this week, so I only have time for a short post.)
The other night I happened to be in a room with a PHP dev, a Ruby dev, and a Java dev. (I was the Perl dev. Huh.)
This specific mix was no accident and we were discussing how developers think about starting new projects and companies. (The phrase “serial entrepreneur” kept being used. Is sounded vaguely naughty.) All of us had experience with other languages, and didn’t seem “married” to our current tool-of-choice, but the others were all surprised that Perl was still being used at all, much less for “real” projects. I got to do my bit to remind them that Perl was still around and could be considered a viable alternative to PHP, Python, Ruby, Java, etc.
So, let’s start at the top: Why are we using Catalyst? What were we using before? Why did we switch?
Our project began as a simple little “we can knock that out in a couple of weeks” kind of thing. (Yeah, I know, insert foreboding music and laugh track.)
Thus begins my journal about my exciting adventures with Technology!
Right now, I’m working on a “secret” project (no code name) and we have decided to move to the Perl-based Catalyst application framework, with all that entails.
Several of the usual suspects and members of the secret project have opined that my perspective as 1) a card-carrying technical document writer, 2) a gifted amateur in the realm of Perl programming, and 3) a generally insightful person and asker-of-good-questions might be of some interest to the Perl/Catalyst community.
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