Ya know, when they first implemented the "horseless carriage", they put a horse's head on the front of the car so as not to scare the other horses.

I thought that was rather silly too.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker
Be sure to read my standard disclaimer if this is a reply.

update

I'm not entirely surprised that I'm getting negative XP for this post. After all, I hold a pretty idealistic point of view that tools like perl2exe do more harm than good.

But I believe that people who try to lock up Perl source are spitting in the face of the people who brought Perl to them in the first place.

So shoot me.

You have the right to your own opinion.


I thought it was rather silly too. :)


I understand what you are getting at, but I don't agree with it..nor does it make any sense in this particular situation. ..Especially when these people don't know what horses are, let alone cars.


It appears from the replies thus far that many of my fellow monks understood the necessity of my question.

Please update your "standard disclaimer" to include:

o "I think compiling Perl is silly."

o "I like to make things complicated for those not of the Perl faith by avoiding abstraction."

o "I will walk in <to be named monk's> shoes before passing summary judgement from my high horseless carriage." . . .

jk -> You can take jokes right? ..as I did not see any mention of that in your disclaimer... :>

Is it Christmas yet? -P0w3rK!d

Today, someone would patent that idea.

Wow merlyn it must be cool to have every user smart! Can I trade you some for some of mine? ;-)

How is it that JIT principle is the way to go? It makes sense if there are going to be "frequent" modifications to a script or it is a quick and dirty script.

A compiled script does have some merit. What if you don't need Perl on every machine? Or in my case, you have users who know enough to be dangerous?

<comedy>
Was that the year the Mustang came out? GD&R... ;)
</comedy>

Actually I've got a situation where I would love to be able to compile a perl app. I'm writing a program that I want to put it on a box at work for our accountant, and I really don't see a reason to take up her disk space with Perl since we ran out of HD space on her last PC ( don't ask, the accounting program was written in compiled basic the last time I checked...) so the possibility of doing a small compiled app is intriguing.

That said, as far as programs being used and maintained by programmers, I wholeheartly agree with you in that respect.

There is no emoticon for what I'm feeling now.

BANG

;-p All right maybe I am not following your reasoning. How does perl2exe do more harm then good?

Locking up source code? How is that spitting in your face? The people running the script (at least in my place) have no desire to learn Perl. So why is a compiled script bad?

Really I am curious to your thoughts

What is it you are hoping to do with perl2exe that you can't do by simply giving someone else the source code and pointing them at http://www.activestate.com?

You really don't see the difference, do you?

For end users, especially on Windows, it is not the same thing!

It does not involve the same ease of use to (perl2exe) copy the file and double click it; and (source + perl) unzip the source tree, download Perl, install Perl, double click the file.

For you and me this is trivial. But we're not users, we're programmers. We are not the audience! But, hey, even I don't want to bother with that if I'm gonna do it on forty machines.

That is what perl2exe and PerlApp are for. Simple distribution to ordinary people who just want to use our great programs to make their lives easier instead of more complicated.

/J