On the user side, (shameless plug) I wrote a little program to show me all my active connections (incoming and outgoing). It could look nicer, but if you run it on windows you can show people what your browser is up to.

ichimunki was working on a web browser in Perl/Tk, and there is another one here.

I'm sure if you wander over to Freshmeat there and type in Perl/Tk there will be a few things there.

There are also two programs I found for designing interfaces in Perl/Tk, a la MS IDEs, but I lost the links to them. Try freshmeat/sourceforge again.

____________________
Jeremy
I didn't believe in evil until I dated it.

• Automated data fetching
• Data munging
• Filtering
• Flow management and scheduling
• Format translation
• Prototyping
• Viewer backends
• Viewers (ASCII, CGI, Perl/Tk based)

We also have programs running in C and in C++, of course.

You want to see Perl doing some whiz-bang things? Why don't you take the time to look around the site and check out things such as pVoice, by our main man Jouke.

There's plenty out there that will honk your horn i'm sure, just invest the time and explore our site. And a word of advice - uninformed criticism of Perl on a website dealing with Perl for Perl Hackers is usually not a good idea :)

Azatoth a.k.a Captain Whiplash

I think what you may be seeing is the way Perl is viewed by the general 'net population, to whom VB or even Excel macros ar far more familiar and friendly, and Perl is cryptic and foreign. How that leads one to believe that data manipulation is not real work I am at a loss to explain. It sounds more like these people you are refering to are judging their languages by their user interfaces. That may be appropriate for some, but for me at least, data munging is by far more real and important than flashy interfaces (but then I'm not currently writing end-user applications).

I've coded seriously in many languages for my work and research, and though my Perl code is neither flashy nor whiz-bang, it certainly makes my job much easier (and more enjoyable) than anything else I've used. Try moving any other code from a DOS to a VAX to Win32 to LINUX without any significant modifications - Fortran always put up a big fight but Perl copes very well. In the end, it is how well a given language suits your specific task and environment that should determine whether you use it, and the huge code resource of CPAN combined with the awesome teaching power of The Monastery are two significant bonuses for me.

--
I'd like to be able to assign to an luser

1. Updates took (usually) 10 minutes, once we got the info.
2. Was used for 90% of the workload for 2 groups, and 50% for a third
3. Was requested by both an internal group and a customer to be sold outside the company, in lieu of we were selling right now.
4. One and a half people supported it, as opposed to the similar JAVA application, which required 20 people.
5. Supported 3 incompatible versions of messaging (and could support more easily)
6. The same code ran on both Unix and Win32. (We didn't release the Win32 version solely because of trying to figure out distribution issues.)
7. Had its own scripting language that was used to automate over 10,000 tests, saving close to 25,000 man-hours per year. (That's not an exaggeration.)

Now, it didn't have a ton of bells and whistles, but our primary users (engineers) didn't want them. I wanted to add them, but kept being yelled at. :)

Now, in case you're wondering about the merits of Perl, this is what they are:

1. Ease of development. You might not release it in Perl, but you prototype it in Perl.
2. Ease of maintenance. I've found that it's easier to keep something current in Perl, due to the speedier edit-run cycle.
3. Extensibility. Something not in the language? Add it, at the compiler level!
4. Ease of transition. Since it's easier to teach someone Perl than, say, C++ or Java, it takes less time for someone to come up to speed to take over your job.

And the difference between

'Perl isn't a "true" language'

and

People who think VB is God's gift to anything will not ... appreciate ... a proper tool.

is what, exactly?

Scott


---

... they decided that Sneetches are Sneetches
And no kind of Sneetch is the best on the beaches,
That day, all the Sneetches forgot about stars
And whether they had one, or not, upon thars.

I think the first probably means that the compiled snobs are saying that Perl's partially-interpreted nature means it's not a "true" language.

The second refers to the idiocy of people who speak on topics that they have no knowledge of. :)

Now, in VB's defense, it is a very, very useful tool. It makes the MS products (partially) extensible, and extensibility is (almost) always a "Good Thing"(tm). It's also great for sketching GUI's, just as Perl is great for sketching programs. But, just try writing a multi-platform data-munging tool in VB. *grins*

Very little difference, but somehow I don't think that's what you meant. You see, in my opinion People who say Perl isn't a "true" language, are guilty of much the same thing as those who think VB can solve all their problems. Granted, I may have been more strongly worded on the second issue (I suppose personal histories have shaped that), but both are closed-minded, and unproductive.

Find the useful tool.

--- perchance
p.s. I don't have anything in particular against VB, more against bosses who extoll without cause.

The primary critique of perl is actually economic. The idea that best-in-class tools are open-source scares many people. The feasibility of open-source implies that someone could destroy a closed-source business with a competetive open-source program. Many people would like to deny that this is possible or desirable.

These same people are often afraid of non-perl open-source tools such as Linux. Such people can sometimes be reassured by telling them that you can buy support for these tools from a reputable support organization. Then they get to think, "Well, our world-class support organization will prevent an open-source upstart from knocking us off."

Often perl source code is hidden on a web server, where people can get the benefits of running the program without having access to the source code. If your business model is "I write source code and sell the executable," you are likely to think "perl is a web-server language."

I think that perl is an anomaly in the software world because it is clean, fast, and cheap. As such, it violates people's expectations. If you agree with me and you want be a perl advocate, consider that this anomaly may require extra explanation.

I like explain the benefits of perl using the FURPS model:
Functionality
Usability
Reliability
Performance
Supportability
By running down this list and showing how perl stacks up, you can make a good case.

It should work perfectly the first time! - toma

One of the important things for a 'real' language is a slick GUI-based debugger.

And and in perland goes, for free. Check Open Perl @ sourceforge.net. Slick GUI debugger, like Visual Basic (hoovering mouse over variable displays current value, etc.). For ActiveState/Windows perl only.

pmas
To make errors is human. But to make million errors per second, you need a computer.

ptkdb is also a slick GUI debugger, and it works on Linux, HP-UX, windows, etc. It has hovering, watch variables, breakpoints, stepping, etc.

I really like debugging cgi programs with it. In X-Windows I set the $ENV{DISPLAY} in the BEGIN block and call ptkdb in the shebang:

#!/usr/bin/perl -d:ptkdb
$|++;
BEGIN { $ENV{DISPLAY}; }
[download]

You can single step or set breakpoints in your cgi and watch the output get rendered in your browser as you go.

It should work perfectly the first time! - toma

And don't forget, CGI stuff can indeed be whiz-bang impressive. Like, PerlMonks itself.