It's kind of a tough call what to recommend. He's a mod_perl newbie, so I don't feel comfortable suggesting he start with mp 2 at the moment. Ultimately the best approach is probably to write for mp 1 now, and port it in a few years with the help of compat, but Registry is a tempting alternative for applications that are not really using the Apache API.
Not at all, mp2 1.99_10 is very robust (at least according to our test suite), and the we mainly haven't finalized the API for new features, the features coming from mp1 are pretty much the same (assuming Apache 2.0 kept the API) and won't change. Since most people want mod_perl for its PerlResponseHandler I think most newbies will be just fine with mp2, while using the books/docs for mp1 and what's available for mp2. Especially as you mention for Registry scripts.
I can echo that.
in my mind, mod_perl 1.0 as the stable version means that 1.0 is the version you use for mission critical applications - ones where your business depends on your web presence, and where going down, ever, means very bad things.
now, I doubt that newbies will be developing software that fits into that category - at least I didn't when I was getting into it at first, and I wouldn't trust my mission critical applications to a technology developers weren't familiar with.
so, that leaves newbies as hobbyists or developers of small deployments. mod_perl 2.0 at the point where it is probably usable for this: nearing feature completion and appearing somewhat dependable in almost-real-world situations to us developers.
so I see no harm in letting the masses get their feet wet with 2.0 now. we have lots of people installing it on lots of different platforms, so getting past the initial installation hurdle shouldn't be any more difficult than with 1.0. after that, the main API hasn't changed much, so the documentation for 1.0 is still farily relevant (once you get past loading all those classes).
on a self-serving note to those of us that work on 2.0: 2.0 isn't going to reach "enterprise" readiness until people start banging on it regularly in small deployments, graduating to larger deployments as issues are reported and fixed. and getting people past the "it's not ready" stigma is the first stage - it's probably time to get behind mod_perl 2.0 as as good a place as any to start.
just my humble opinion...
--Geoff
