Over the past decade+ I've consulted on nearly a score of Perl Catalyst based applications while building dozens more in my spare time and these are the facts of life I've found which lead to a maintainable and scalable code base.
In its nearly 20 years of existence many companies have built web applications and APIs on top of the Perl Catalyst web framework. A Perl programmer working in the field or seeking a position has a not unreasonable chance of coming across Catalyst on the job. For "greenfield" projects many people may consider Catalyst due to its reputation for long term stability and commitment to backward compatibility. For a Perl programmer in either bucket it would be ideal to have a set of design patterns aimed at solving some of the most common programming tasks and issues one encounters when using this venerable framework. I've been using and maintaining Catalyst for nearly 20 years, I've seen some great ideas and some astounding blunders. The goal of this talk is to distill what I've learned into a comprehensive approach to building "Well Formed Catalyst" web applications. A Well Formed Catalyst application uses simple, repeatable design patterns which enhance developer speed while promoting long term code comprehension and maintainability. The goal of Well Formed Catalyst is to build applications and APIs that stand the test of time.
