Commit | Line | Data |
6756e815 |
1 | =head1 NAME |
2 | |
3 | Catalyst::Manual::Monthly::2012::March::NotACatalystApp |
4 | |
5 | =head2 Why the Monthly is not a Catalyst App |
6 | |
7 | Back in the old days when web frameworks were new and shiny it made sense |
8 | for developers to show off how the framework makes development quick easy |
9 | and fun with little demonstration applications. Create a blog in 5 minutes |
10 | is the classic example. the L<http://dev.catalyst.perl.org/repos/Catalyst/trunk/examples/CatalystAdvent|Catalyst Advent Calendar> code was |
11 | another. And it served well for quite some time. |
12 | |
13 | So when the time came to retire the calendar and replace it with this |
14 | monthly we needed some new infrastructure. Well the obvious answer was to |
15 | replace it with some new infrastructure. At first thought you'd think that |
16 | we might want to write a new Catalyst app. But think again. |
17 | |
18 | Basically all we really want to do is to provide a location on the web |
19 | where these articles appear. Putting them into an RSS feed would also be |
20 | handy. Finally publishing that RSS feed onto their own page would be |
21 | useful too. |
22 | |
23 | While we could use Catalyst to do this, why should we? Given we've got a |
24 | good packaging and distribution mechanism (the CPAN), and given we've got a |
25 | CPAN browser with a nice API (L<http://metacpan.org|MetaCPAN>), and given |
26 | we've got a nice documentation formatting mechanism (pod), that's already |
27 | all we need. We don't need Catalyst for this, because it's not especially |
28 | big or complicated. For big and complicated things like CPAN, a Catalyst |
29 | application is a useful thing, which is why we've got |
30 | L<http://metacpan.org|MetaCPAN>. To use an analogy, just because we've got |
31 | a hydraulic nail gun (Catalyst) doesn't mean we should go about shooting |
32 | everything we own with nails. |
33 | |
34 | But although we don't need a Catalyst application we do need volunteers. |
35 | |
36 | =head2 Making the Catalyst Monthly a Success |
37 | |
38 | Here's what we need to make the Catalyst Monthly a success: |
39 | |
40 | =over |
41 | |
42 | =item * |
43 | |
44 | Articles. They can be longer (like last month's), or shorter (like this |
45 | month's). It shouldn't take more than an hour to write a decent-ish |
46 | article based on work you've already done. Remember there are always |
47 | editors available to look at your work and fix writing issues. |
48 | |
49 | =item * |
50 | |
51 | Infrastructure. We need an RSS feed created based on the MetaCPAN |
52 | API distribution, and/or from the Monthly's |
53 | <Lhttp://git.shadowcat.co.uk/gitweb/gitweb.cgi?p=catagits/Catalyst-Manual-Monthly.git|git |
54 | repository>. |
55 | |
56 | =item * |
57 | |
58 | Readers. Commenters might be nice too. But we can get them after we get |
59 | the infrastructure up, maybe by exploiting the L<http://disqus.com/|Disqus> |
60 | service. We get more readers from having better infrastructure. |
61 | |
62 | =back |
63 | |
64 | Remember, Catalyst is glue to make web-like programing easy, efficient and |
65 | DRY (don't repeat yourself). It's not a universal nail gun for all of your |
66 | programming problems. It's the sign of a good web framework that it gets |
67 | out of your way until you need it, then it allows you to accomodate your |
68 | prior assumptions. |
69 | |
70 | =head3 AUTHORS AND COPYRIGHT |
71 | |
72 | Words and a little bit of code: |
73 | Kieren Diment <zarquon@cpan.org> |
74 | |
75 | =head3 LICENCE |
76 | |
77 | This documentation can be redistributed it and/or modified under the same terms as Perl itself. |