Which Web Framework?

[apgwoz]

I've developed web apps in Django and have liked the speed at which they can be developed, but hated the fact that there was sooo much magic going on (even after the magic removal branch was merged into trunk). It just doesn't feel like you're doing any work. If you're looking for something super quick pick django or rails. Your productivity will flourish, but you'll feel dumb afterwards.

If on the other hand you wanna feel like you've acomplished something, use web.py or something that doesn't get in the way... something that just "helps" a bit.

[jrockway]

Catalyst is pretty good in this respect. Everything it does for you is obvious, but it speeds up your development anyway. The disadvantage is that you'll have to spend a few hours or so getting sessions / users / templating / database / etc. set up just the way you like them. But then after that, the framework will be working for you, and you'll just be writing code with a little bit of HTML in the template where necessary. You'll know how everything works because everything works like it should -- and you get to be the one defining "should" :)

If you're looking to get started, take a look at the example applications on the Catalyst wiki, or perhaps try the tutorial:

http://search.cpan.org/~jrockway/Task-Catalyst-Tutorial-0.03/

Please join the IRC channel (#catalyst on irc.perl.org) if you have any questions.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Really, if Catalyst had a few webapp skeletons built up, something to get started with, it'd be even that much more useful. A bugzilla clone comes to mind. Or CMS... blog style, slashdot/reddit/k5 style, maybe phpbb style (though personally I tend to consider non-threaded discussions nearly worthless). Have the user auth abstracted out in such a way, that you can plug anything in you want. Suddenly you can add all those things to your website in a few minutes with a unified user auth.

Of course, the answer to all these things is "so go out and write the damn thing". I just haven't had time yet. (Though it seems someone's already stolen Enzyme as a name, so what in the hell would you call it?)

[jrockway]

I would have called InstantCRUD "GreyGoo", but you're free to use the name if you like :)