Moving On
June 5, 2009 at 11:02 am
I just unsubscribed from the CGI::Application mailing list. I no longer use CGI::App and the mails were just cluttering my inbox. My first Perl CGi script was written using plain ol’ CGI.pm many years ago. I ran across it again recently and winced when I read the code. I saw messes of nested function calls to generate the HTML, manually processing form data, etc. Scary stuff, but it worked. Then I found CGI::Application and HTML::Template and gleefully jumped on board. It made my life much easier. About 2 years ago I encountered Catalyst and started learning it. The applications I was writing were growing more complex and CGI::Application was becoming part of the problem instead of the solution, so Catalyst was attractive to me and offered a very flexible, powerful platform for developing web applications. I’ve been using it ever since and have deployed several large application using it. So, with a fond farewell, I signed off the CGI::Application mailing list.
Categories: Perl
I’d like your thoughts on specific benefits that make Catalyst worth switching to. It seems to me that a big reason people dislike CGIApp is that they don’t immediately see how to subdivide it into multiple controllers. What reasons did you have for switching?
The first thing in Catalyst that really drew my attention was the concept of Chaining controller methods together to build up the URLs and behaviors. It just made sense to me and helped me solve some code organization problems I was having with CGI::App. CGI:App introduced me to MVC and Catalyst is continuing in that vein in ways that I really appreciate.
Does that help?
Lance, need to talk with you about a software install for CUUPS. I will be at GA, and not leaving until Monday – perhaps we can talk there – or just email me.
Replied in direct email, David.