[tpm] Perl as a career

[Abram Hindle]

My concern these days is for all the focus of webapp frameworks to be so
HTML/CSS/JS/ORM centric. Many of them seem to completely ignore the fact that
we made UIs for years by using abstractions such as widgets. I've seen a few
little systems which attempted to actually abstract a lot of this tedium by
providing client/server GUI abstractions, but most of these are java and are
relatively unpopular due to a mixture of concerns.

The only place I've seen/been told where the "abstract the web as a UI, provide
widgets" approach has taken off has been ASP.NET. The problem there is that it
is a proprietary microsoft based framework which is often difficult to host
online on a budget.

>From what I have personally observed and been told Rails, Catalyst, Seaside,
Happstack, Drupal etc, all DO NOT provide good UI abstractions, they are in
fact stuck wallowing in the nitty gritty with poorly composed JS generators and
HTML templates.

This really bothers me and I'm unaware of a perl framework which attempts to 
deal with web ui widgets as widgets.

My personal opinion is we are at the mercy of managers who care about pretty
pictures and rounded corners and designers who care about the same thing.

I don't think perl just needs this, I think the web needs this. Devs need a
good shot in the arm , they should compose UIs from widgets, not rewriting
widgets everytime to suit their small needs.

What do I want to hear about (I don't mean a talk, I mean discussion, I'm
asking questions here):
* Perl Frameworks which are used to develop web app which have widget/ui level 
abstractions
* Other frameworks which people have heard of used which operate at this level
* Difficulties people have had with trying use the UI widget abstraction for 
web apps.
* What don't popular web frameworks do to support this level of abstraction.

abram

On Sun, 8 Mar 2009, Antonio Sun wrote:

> On Sun, Mar 8, 2009 at 9:31 AM,  <arocker at vex.net> wrote:
> 
>> It sounds as though Antonio has identified a topic that would make a
>> worthwhile meeting topic; duelling frameworks, or "How to create web
>> applications without really trying". . .
> 
> <smile> I meant, technology improvement has arrived to a point that
> its focus has been shifted from benefiting the end users with better
> tools (word process, spreed sheet, etc, etc, you name it), to
> benefiting the developers with better building blocks.
> 
> I'm not a giant myself, but I can stand on a giant's shoulder. :-)
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