Catalyst is getting better by the minute. The installation is painless if you use Matt’s Shadowcat installer and the docs strengthen every time the core stabilises further. It started out scary because it went through a phase of hyperrapid development (core infrastructure was moving around with every minor release for a while) where it was impossible to document it properly. Things are settling in, trust me.
As for new apps, I don’t know why so few people write stuff with Gtk2-Perl. It’s the coolest way to do GUIs I’ve seen – quick, easy, based on a powerful toolkit, and unlike Tk, neither your app nor its code look disgusting. I’ve been meaning to write a GUI feed aggregator in Perl for a while; Gtk2-Perl will definitely be my weapon of choice for that.
Makeshifts last the longest.
