Recently in Catalyst Category

Looks like we're starting to get an idea together for the new Cocoa Touch platform. Stay tuned. :)

In other news, the www.whatthefuck.com relaunch has been going really well. Some old timers have come back, and the site is more stable than it ever has been. The speed is still up to snuff too, even though we're using a platform far more abstracted than the original. The original was self rolled Perl, embedded HTML, no CGI.pm, no templating, self-created cookies, the whole shebang. The new system is using the Catalyst Framework as the core, with DBIx::Class for database abstraction, Template Toolkit for the viewable HTML and XML, and utility processes using the Moose OO Framework for Perl. I'm quite happy with the result, with the manageability and maintainability, and the speed I get through FastCGI on Apache.

I've started doing a call out to users on new features and suggestions. From the latest list I put out, I think that after the first half is complete, I'll be ready to do a full launch of the site and start getting the word out.

Oh, and I fixed commenting on the blog. Sorry about that.

Tuesday morning, I took whatthefuck.com down for an hour and moved everything to the new 4.0 release of the site. You cannot undersatnd how happy this makes me, it's been something I've been wanting and trying to do for about four years now.

The original www.whatthefuck.com is a series of CGI scripts strung together in a semi-cohesive mess of perl with inline HTML. The main update that the old system got was moving from cascading flat files to MySQL, and it was barely relational. The new web site is the culmination of many things I've learned since October of 1999. Some of it is a bit rushed, and I get to go in and clean up now, but it works, and the few failures I've seen have been quickly patched. I need to go through some security checks still, but things are "looking good".

The new site is still written in Perl, but utilizes the Catalyst MVC Web Application Framework. I've switched to PostgreSQL for the database, and DBIx::Class as the perl interface to it. The front end templates are all rendered using the Template Toolkit classes, and for those of you writing Perl web scripts without it, you're seriously missing out. This combination allows me the combined luxuries of using CPAN with a solid rapid application development framework, and I couldn't be happier.

More later, perhaps.

Just like an entry long before, here is whatthefuck.com in the current Catalyst rewrite. Two weeks until it is deployed to replace the current codebase, and I couldn't be happier. Bigger under the link.

Not sure what was going on with me this morning, but I think I was trying to pick a fight in #catalyst this morning. I was at work all of about ten minutes before I asked a simple question, amounting to: "Are there any plans to bring Catalyst to a wider audience?" Confusion followed, followed by a decent discussion. The general point I was trying to make is simple. If you ask someone who works near web development if they've ever heard of Ruby on Rails, chances are, they have. If you ask them about Catalyst, you'll usually end up with a shrug. Those who are willing to listen further generally stop listening as soon as you say "framework for perl".

There is a stigma attached to perl for various reasons -- people view perl as unreadable, or slow, or hard to develop in on a large scale. Most people have a perception of perl that dates back to the late 90's, coding against cgi-lib.pl or CGI.pm. Hell, back then, I was rolling my own CGI scripts so they were 'lightweight'. God forbid anyone look at my code from back then. Perl was pushed as a rapid-development, but hacky language, and most people produced a lot of code that looked like line noise or otherwise, and that is what is burned into people's minds. There is an unfortunate percentage of the current perl population that still writes kludgy one script wonders and calls it a web application, and that's also bad for the community, in my opinion. Frankly, a language that holds contests on who can make the most unreadable code, or who can fit the most into one line, generally deserves that stigma.

The other side of the coin is Perl 6, the upcoming complete rewrite of Perl. If you Google for perl 6, you'll find articles talking about its impending release dating back to 2001, yet we still don't have a final revision. The bytecode interpreter is far from complete, and the closest thing there is to a working, usable interpreter is written in Haskell, another higher level language. The whole thing feels kludgy and incomplete to an outsider, and that's probably because compared to other modern object oriented languages like Ruby and Python, Perl 6 is kludgy and incomplete.

So, disillusionment and wankery abounds when it comes to perl, and a lot of it is deserved. It's a perception problem, and one that is almost impossible to solve. But, hell, I'm stubborn, and other people have made far inferior products rise from the ashes.

Those who remember a few years back realize that not many people were aware of or used Ruby before Rails came out, and a lot of old perl hands fell right into Ruby because of its similarities. I find Ruby to go against 'what I mean', so it's a reach when I start pounding out any code. I was hoping to find an alternative when I stumbled upon Catalyst, and I've been hooked since. I think quite a few people would see the same thing, if they only knew what was there.

My plea to #catalyst was simple. Catalyst is a diamond in the rough, a flexible, fast, and powerful web application framework that is very easy to use once you get over the first learning curve. It is an excellent demonstration of modern OO perl development, despite any flaws or issues that still remain in the framework. The problem, however, is there is very little marketing or outreach happening, and without any kind of constant public opinion, the userbase stagnates and eventually shrinks, leaving frameworks like Catalyst to die on the vine. Someone within the Catalyst community, or even tangentally related to the Catalyst community needs to find a way to bring people back into the perl fold by making them aware of the strengths of the framework.

A few things would need to happen, in no particular order. Note that this is only my opinion, and I'd be happy to be told I was wrong.

• They want their wiki moved from Trac to MojoMojo before they do any major wiki work. Fine, I'll give that one.


• Get some nice looking skeletons into the default Catalyst project template. Make it look pretty. For some reason, this actually works, and makes people want to do the same.


• Catalyst's primary development happens on mailing lists and on IRC. This should be outlined somehow within the wiki so creep doesn't occur.


• The primary focus of catalystframework.org should be marketing and outreach -- a bulletproof example of the stability and scalability of an application written in the framework, with easy to deal with tutorials and a complete set of hyperlinked documentation. Links should be given to external sites who use the framework, as well as third party Catalyst tutorial sites.


• There needs to be a third party tutorial and development site! You can toot your own horn, but it's hard to convince people that what you have works really well unless they can see other people getting together and doing things really well. The real championing of OS X doesn't happen on apple.com, so the real championing of Catalyst shouldn't be on catalystframework.org. Luckily, it's not, as the site is a bore and makes the project look dead, as it is hardly updated.


• Along with the third party site comes some community support. Bring people together. Show people to IRC, bring people to a forum. Get a forum of a couple of hundred and hold CatalystConf or something similar. The key to getting the product into the eyes of many is to show people that there is an active following behind it. Lesser languages and frameworks do it and give people confidence to continue developing. Check out Lasso and REALbasic if you have no idea what I mean.


• Tell people you're using Catalyst. If you run a site that is truly great, and starting to get public attention, mention the framework. The Rails apps are doing it. The PHP people just try to hide that it's PHP behind it.

I'm not talking about zealotry, here. I'm not talking about Catalyst being the best or brightest, or that perl is the best or the brightest. I'm not talking about how Ruby, Python, or PHP suck (this time). I'm only talking about bringing a really great language and a fantastic framework into the foreground so people are at least aware of the options before they talk some smack.

Or maybe, just maybe, I'm completely full of it.

As if I don't have enough going on my head for side projects, I've been playing with Perl 6 a lot recently. I'm really getting a craving to write a Perl 6 IDE -- something with the kind of integration that EPIC on Eclipse or ActiveState Komodo simply can't offer.

The thing that fries me about most of these IDEs is that Perl comes in last. Very little command completion, half braindead debugging systems, while other languages seem to work great. Some of it lies with Perl, as the TMTOWTDI makes writing an IDE really difficult. Maybe Perl 6 can really help with that.

Incidentally, despite my love affair with Komodo, I elected not to upgrade to 4.0. TextMate is serving my needs for now with system tools and Catalyst development, but I occasionally long for the debugger and RegEx Toolkit.

I've been toying with the fantastic idea of a "Catalyst Studio" type of application. Not saying I would or could write such a thing -- I likely could, it's merely a matter of a "serious lack of time".

A quick and dirty back story: I've been finishing off the newest revision of whatthefuck.com in Catalyst 5.7 on Perl. It's really quite a neat tool, really designed for large scale web applications that require the ability to scale, and will likely have many hands on it. It lacks the (relative) simplicity of your average PHP script, as well as the elegance and niceties that go with other object oriented web application servers such as WebObjects.

WebObjects, for those who don't know, is one of the modern founding fathers of MVC web application development. Large companies used WebObjects to create high availability, large scale applications and paid anywhere from $5,000 to $50,000 for the privilege to do so. WO was originally developed by NeXT Software, was written using Objective-C, and ran on NeXT Server software. As time went on, it ran on Solaris and Windows, and converted completely to Java between version 4 and 5. After Apple bought NeXT, WebObjects became a part of Apple Enterprise. Now, you can't write a WO app in Objective-C, and development is free with any copy of Mac OS X 10.4, and deployment is free with any copy of Mac OS X Server 10.4. Unfortunately, you can't even pay them money to deploy or develop on any other platform. It's simply end of life.

History lesson being complete, I can finally rejoin my train of thought, 200 miles down the track. WebObjects was really cool in that you never had to touch a database, and sometimes, never had to touch code. You would use an application called EOModeler to design a database schema, creating the data sets you need, designing relationships to other tables, and creating a data map. This is a lot easier than it sounds -- if you've ever organized a database, even an Excel spreadsheet, you can use EOModeler. Now here's the cool part. EOModeler will then create the tables in any of its supported JDBC databases, and generate Java classes for you to add, remove, modify, or delete data, so you never really have to write any SQL unless you absolutely have to.

The ORM features in Catalyst allow the same type of system to happen. You can tell Catalyst to generate some classes based on your existing MySQL, or Postgres, or whatever database, and you can use those classes to do the same add/remove/modify/delete as above. Except for the fact that you have to manually declare relationships within each class. The references to them are kinda odd as well, but I can go into that later.

The other issue with Catalyst is the fact that it's written in Perl, so there are twelve different ways to do the same thing. Catalyst is the perfect microcosm of perl culture. When I first looked at Catalyst, early in 2005, there was a certain recommended way of creating your application, and a certain database model (Class::DBI or Class::DBI::Sweet if you were on the edge), and most tutorials had you manually creating classes anyhow. Now, it's all DBIx::Class::Schema and RenderView, and this will probably all be replaced in 5.8. On top of that, many of the handy perl IDEs won't help you much with your Catalyst object ($c), or render the standard Catalyst tree very well. Java users have all sorts of fun tools, and WebObjects users have a whole IDE that work very well. Sure, we have TextMate or Komodo, but they aren't the whole shebang, and I want the whole shebang.

Maybe I will take on a project that works like EOModeler, but works with DBIx::Class::Schema and Catalyst. Maybe we can go from there.

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