Re: www.masonhq.com back to work?

On Feb 10, 2012, at 7:57 PM, Dave Rolsky wrote:

> On Thu, 9 Feb 2012, Paul Wallingford wrote:
> 
>> 1) Different configurations for the web server side.  How do I make this
>> work with:
>> - Apache / mod_perl (for production)
>> - Apache /Fast CGI (for production)
>> - Standard CGI (for development or servers I cannot change significantly)
>> - other servers such as AOL, etc.
> 
> Use Catalyst, Dancer, or some other framework that supports all of these 
> (and other) deployment modes.

Plack/PSGI supports all these deployment modes, in fact it's kind of their raison d'etre. You don't
need Catalyst/Dancer for that. (In fact one of the things that bother me about Catalyst/Dancer
is that they implement their own support for this instead of just relying on Plack/PSGI - in Catalyst's
case this is historical, Dancer has less of an excuse other than not wanting dependencies.)

> 
>> 6) Moose is slow.  So slow, that even the Moose people address it in
>> their FAQ.  What can I do to speed it up?  What if I can only run on a
>> standard CGI server that does not have mod_perl?  Is it possible to use
>> Mouse instead?  Will Mason2 have a conniption?  Are there things I can
>> do with Mason so that it will not utilize some of the slower Moose features?
> 
> Moose doesn't have a FAQ, so I'm not sure what you're referring to.
> 

search.cpan.org/perldoc?Moose::Manual::FAQ sure looks like one :)

> 
> Here's some other possibilities ...
> 
> * Nobody is using Mason 1 _or_ 2. They've all moved on to 
> Template::Declare, Quicksilver, and Ruby on Rails. Rails is for cool 
> people. Those of us still on the list are totally unhip losers.

I'd rephrase that as follows: Few people are using Mason or Perl for *new* web development projects; the've all moved on to Rails and Django. At least that's what I observe from my perch in San Francisco, which admittedly has a higher than normal share of hip people and startups.

Compare these pages to see what I mean:
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/jjj/sfc?query=perl&srchType=T
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/jjj/sfc?query=rails&srchType=T

I know this is only one datapoint, but it's one that's very relevant to my life and has been moving in the wrong direction for a while.

Nonetheless, I'm still hopelessly devoted to Perl and so seek out the few jobs that feature it. :)

> * Mason 1 is very stable, and it has good documentation. People are happy 
> with it for now, and so aren't jumping to use a new templating system, 
> even one named Mason 2.

Yes.

And just so everyone understands where my expectations are at: I didn't *expect* a whole bunch of people to jump to Mason 2 any time soon (if ever). It was not that kind of mild upgrade. It's a big leap, something of an experiment, possibly a little before its time (given that Moose and especially Plack/PSGI are still maturing), more like a whole new templating system with a similar syntax than an "upgrade" as its name might suggest. I briefly thought about changing the name, but I'm too fond of this one.

> * The list was a lot more active in the days when people used Mason as 
> their entire web framework, often paired with mod_perl. I can't 
> count the number of threads we've had about mod_perl issues.
> 

Yes. Take a look at the mailing list archives during the peak - e.g. http://marc.info/?l=mason&r=1&b=200010&w=2 - and notice how many questions are not about Mason per se but rather mod_perl and Perl web development in general. I too see a lot of those same discussions in the Catalyst list now.

> Nowadays, the action has moved on to other places, like the Catalyst list. 
> People still use Mason 1 and/or 2, but it's a much smaller part of their 
> development stack. This, BTW, describes me. I use Mason 1 solely for 
> templating on new projects. If I switch to Mason 2 that won't change.

Yes, sadly Dave is one of those that believe in a separate controller layer in modules. They are all wrong, but they comprise about 90% of the Perl community so what can you do :p

Jon


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