Wishlist for YAPC:EU talks

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--- Modern Application Design

I agree with Mr. Constantin, it would be good to have a simple 2-D matrix of "software feature comparison" where the x-axis has 3 columns (Catalyst, Mojo, Dancer), and the y-axis has 5 or 10 columns with the major features/benefits of each software package. In each cell of the matrix, a simple red-X or green-check to show if the software has that feature. Hopefully Catalyst has green-checks all the way across the Catalyst row. ;)

Also, I think it would be useful to talk a bit about content management systems built on top of Catalyst, because a CMS is pretty much a general-purpose web app which lots of people can get use from. Of course I suggest ShinyCMS! ;)
(Note: I am not the maintainer of Shiny, just a contributor and user.)

I'd have to think about a comparison chart, honestly I might not be able to fairly compare other frameworks since I'm not expert. What I can do is talk about why I think the Catalyst learning curve and complexity has value and what that value is.

I can say I've always used Dancer because there were always trainings and talks about it at YAPC. I've never seen an 'Intro to Catalyst' talk or training session. When there is a large module or framework but no one ever talks about it at a conference, it makes it seem like it is just for legacy use only.

That said, if this is just for 'Modern Application Design' then a talk should definitely contain a quick install guide with best practices (including deployment), and then get into application architecture and how to handle AJAX and single page JS frameworks since that is what everyone uses these days.

Generally Catalyst doesn't demo well since its not aimed at building a toy application in a few minutes. Also I think actually Catalyst is the smallest part of what it takes to build a real application. I think my intention here is to build a real application starting with automation of building and deployment (probably to AWS) and all that.

I also think I'm aiming to build something over iterations that leads to a type of 'one page app' although honestly in real life I see a lot fewer of these on the job :)

If I were you Jon, I'd go into some of the many hooks one can do in catalyst that are a lifesaver for large / old apps. auto, begin, end, and chaining spring to mind.