From: "Jay Kuri" <j...@ion0.com>
I've been watching this discussion and I have ranted my less than
constructive ravings in #catalyst.
My more constructive ravings are below...
First: Perl jobs are not decreasing. While there is not a ton of 'Buzz'
around perl anymore... If you look at actual jobs stats:
http://tiny.cc/kkcCM
(or
http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=+perl+engineer%2C+perl+developer%2C+php+engineer%2C+php+developer%
2C+ruby+developer%2C+python+developer%2C+&l= )
Perl is above all the others by some margin. It's hard to see all these
other languages getting the buzz, when the one we all love is practically
ignored in the press... but that doesn't make it any less good and though
it's hard to tell right now, buzz does not equal real world usage.
In my country there are no jobs for perl developers. There are jobs for
Java, C#, C++ and PHp developers.
The knowledge of perl is considered as an advantage in very few job
announcements, but it is wanted mostly for administrative tasks, not for web
development, and there are very few programmers that even heard about
Catalyst.
Maybe that's why I wrongly thought that this is the same in other countries.
Overall, though, I think that most of us who have used Catalyst for any
period of time know that it is not a beginners platform. It is a
powerful set of tools to solve difficult and complex problems.
I think we need to take a page out of the old Unix'ers handbook. Stop
looking to be as accessible to newbies as the other options, and embrace
our true position... which is simply Catalyst is better. Not because
it's easier to learn, and certainly not because it forces you into one
(easy or not) way of doing things.... but because you can bend it to
whatever form you need to solve whatever problem you have, even the ones
that are less computer science-y and more computer-room- in-the-office-y.
(though we can certainly do the former as well)
In my opinion, we should embrace the fact that Catalyst is bigger, more
complex, and more able. When someone says 'well, Why isn't catalyst as
clear-cut and simple to use like Rails?' we should encourage them...
tell them 'Go... Go play with rails... and when you grow out of it, we'll
be waiting for you.'
We should position Catalyst as the big-sister framework, the one whose
there for you when you are ready to take on big problems that can't be
solved by a bit of automatic CRUD, the ones that can't be stuffed into
the channels that someone else has already dug. We should communicate
an attitude of 'yes, we can solve easy problems too, but we are
particularly good at solving the harder ones.'
If we want to compete for the niche of big sites, we should see why Google,
Yahoo, Amazon, Ebay and other big sites like these don't use Catalyst, what
they are using and why.
Maybe they also have some reasons, because I guess they have developers that
know very well about all the possible options.
Catalyst shouldn't compete for the low end sites not because it wouldn't be
nice, or because Catalyst can't be used for simple web apps, but because it
uses perl and it requires shell access to install it and third party
modules, and this option is not available for most low end sites, so it is
not an option for everyone.
The fact is that Oracle does not try to compete for the low end of the
market with MySQL. They don't want it. They never did. Why do we?
The comparison is good, but not very exact. I know companies which don't use
PostgreSQL but Oracle, because Oracle is better known (because it offers
discounts to the software companies that distribute it, so they have the
interest of promoting it), and because Oracle offers tech support.
The big companies usually want to pass the responsability to others, even if
they need to pay some more.
Octavian
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