[dancer-users] the beauty of dancer

[Zahir Lalani]

Hi All

My apologies if this post is not fully appropriate, but I felt I needed to post - hope its ok.

Although I have used over a dozen languages, over the last 6-8 years perl has been a favourite. But in my last job I was tasked with setting up a large team for a web based enterprise java app. It was big, SOA based took ages to get things done, even with a team of 30.

I have recently moved jobs to a company that has no developers/architects and I was asked to get them into the same space as my previous company. I decided to look at all options again and choose objectively - a toolset to develop a large app with few deveopers. I seriously looked at some of the light weight java frameworks (Ninja), python, ruby and of course perl. I had used Dancer 1 for a small project only, but now Dancer2 seemed to really stand out. Perl was not 'cool' and I have had colleagues laugh at me for suggesting that as a serious option in previous jobs. But here it was down to me, and I eventually chose Dancer2, with Starman/Nginx and Postgresql as the DB.

After a couple of weeks I have a the beginnings of a complex web app which is n+1 scaleable, which has a REST API module and will also have a messaging and workflow tool with a video render farm  - all done in a single language and framework.

Its damn quick to develop, its quick to run, even a colleague who is helping do the templating (and a php developer) is converted! Above all - it's actually fun to see the app come together so quick. Dancer2 is just amazing - the number of add-on modules is great and I can get on with the application without worrying about the nitty gritty.

So - thank you to all who have been involved - you have done an amazing job. I just hope Dancer2 gets more exposure as a serious web framework that it deserves to be.

Z