Re^3: From PHP to Perl - Should I, and how?

[sundialsvc4]

I'd chime-in with three answers for that:   CPAN, CPAN, and finally, CPAN.

Where else could you find something like, oh, say, Image::Flight::Suborbital (or maybe Device::USB::MissileLauncher::RocketBaby, just for fun...) and you can put that into your to your “web” (sic...) application and with a little bit of straightforward coding, “it just works?”

You can start with a requirement to do almost anything at all and find CPAN modules which do it. (Including, by the way, CGI authentication and passwords...)

And throughout it all... TMTOWTDI. The problem with “there's only one way to do it” is that, eventually, you will bang into that. No matter how good “that one way” might be, nor to how many people, if you do run into a limitation, you won't be able to fix the problem within that language.

Try this link: Catalyst. On the one hand, yes, “Catalyst is a web framework.” But on the other hand, you are looking at a list of (today) 906 links, and all of them are “real.” You say that you'd like to incorporate XML RPC-calls neatly into your app? It's there. Oh... you say you don't prefer Catalyst? Try: CGI::Application or Mojo or Jifty or ... ...

Notice: you are still in Perl. So, whether your favorite pasttime is “a web application” or sub-orbital flight paths, or maybe just a rocket-baby, you haven't left Perl.

And that is “what all the fuss is about.”   :-D

[sundialsvc4]

When I said, “Catalyst has 906 other modules associated with it,” I did not mean that “you should install them all!” :-D

“Whoa, there! Slow down, pardner! Whoa!”

What I meant by this comment is:   just within the auspices of “the Catalyst, for example, framework, there are more than 900 modules that you can employ in your application without having to write any of them.”

What you should do is... “stop and look around.” Don't try right-away to do anything. Instead, browse through the listing just to get an idea of what's out there. The web-site for Catalyst is http://www.catalystframework.org. And this is only the tip of the iceberg of what you should spend a day or two prowling through.

The website http://search.cpan.org is also very helpful. CPAN is the principal library of contributed code for Perl. If you type-in the search term "AJAX," you'll see that there are (currently) 146 modules associated with that. So... am I telling you to “install all of those?” Again, no. What I would suggest that you do, to start with, is to simply browse through that list...

“Don't try to understand ’em ... just rope and throw and brand ’em ...”

Just look. You'll see a large list, and a very diverse list, of modules that are highly-specialized, most of which have nothing to do with Catalyst. If you search for catalyst ajax and browse wide-eyed through the list, you'll stumble-upon things like Catalyst::Plugin::Prototype ... which according to its description is “A plugin for the Prototype JavaScript library. This Plugin allows you to easily implement AJAX functionality without actually knowing Javascript.”

“So... install that?” No, just look around.

Your instincts to “just dive in” might be going-off just a little bit too early here. This language is so vast, compared to PHP, that you'll be floating fairly quickly. Look before you leap, and your initial forays into Perl will thereby be much more satisfying and fruitful. Your time will be better spent than otherwise it is likely to be.