Hi and sorry for the provocative title of my post :) One of our customers is doing a detailed review of a mason/modperl ERP app we've built for them since 2001. Prodded by some buzzword-compliant consultants they are expressing concerns that the app's underlying technologies - perl, modperl and mason - are becoming obsolete. They feel that a web application framework must have 'rails' or some other buzzword in its name.
But their main argument is that perl is declining as a web developement language. Also they rightly feel that competent perl developers are becoming harder to find. What arguements could I use to address these concerns and convince them that their initial investement in perl is still safe and won't be obsolete in 10 years? The client's local developers (who maintain the app we've built) feel that mason gives too much freedom to write messy code and badly structure a web app. Indeed mason has very little constraints, maybe just slightly more than straight modperl. So it requires experienced, self-disciplined devs, which are few and far between. So my second question is, what perl web development framework should we recommend to our client? Catalyst looks like a winner, but maybe there are others? Thanks for your insights,
