Announcing Dancer2 1.0.0
On behalf of the Dancer Core Team, I am beyond excited to present you with Dancer2 1.0.0.
For those of you who aren’t a part of the Perl community, Dancer2 is a micro-framework for building web applications. Inspired by Ruby’s Sinatra, it focuses on minimalism; our goal is not to give you everything and the kitchen sink, but rather to serve you ala carte, letting you choose the components and functionality you want, and not burdening you with the rest. This makes your web applications fast and easier to maintain - after all, the easiest code to maintain is the code you didn’t have to write or include!
Don’t let this minimalism fool you, however; Dancer2 can provide you with all the functionality you need to build a modern web application. State management, web sockets, support for modern templating systems (Handlebars, etc.) are all easy and intuitive to add. Dancer2 plays nicely with modern front-end frameworks, from full-blown frameworks such as React and Svelte to micro-frameworks such as AlpineJS and htmx. Pick a style of application (MVC, MVVC, API, etc.) and Dancer2 will quickly become a go-to tool in your box.
We have a small but friendly community, enthusiastic about Dancer2 and Perl. Contrary to what the trolls will tell you, Perl is anything but dead, and we’re working hard to make it more relevant than ever.
In future posts, we’ll show you how to build a basic web application in Dancer2, and tell you more about our community, our goals, and building products in Perl. We hope you’ll come along for the journey; it’s definitely not your father’s Perl!
There’s never been a better time to get started with Perl, or if you’ve been away a while, to come back to it. Dancer2, its ecosystem, and Perl will help you to be an extremely productive web developer.