I think sometimes even a correct answer offered in the best of intentions can hurt. For example today, in a mailing list, someone asked whether there is "something like in VBA I press F8 and can step through the program and see how are the variables changed". Now, is "perldoc perldebug" and "perldoc perldebtut" the right answer? I mean, sure you can step through the program, watch the variables etc etc etc with the builtin Perl debuger, but ... what reaction do you expect from someone who's used to graphical debugers displaying the code, hightlighting the current statement, listing the selected variables, allowing you to expand and shrink the data structures in the watches, etc. etc. etc. All in a nice graphical package. What I expect in that case is that the person will be scared! And think that he just traveled thirty years in time. Into the past.

It doesn't matter that the profis can easily do things that would be hard or impossible in the graphical debuger, it doesn't matter that this CLI-based interface is available everywhere, through any terminal emulation or whatnot. What matters is that for this person, this kind of debugger will feel terrible. And will be an additional hurdle to learning Perl. And possibly even a good enough reason to stop experimenting with Perl and go find a "newer" language.

All this while there are IDEs (I believe some of them free) that contain a graphical debugger similar to the one that person expects and there is the Devel::ptkdb which (even if it looks a bit strange in some regards) is still much closer to the expectations and needs of that guy/gal.

So please, do keep in mind who are you talking to. We do not want to scare people away, do we? :-)

Jenda
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In reply to Right answers for the right people by Jenda

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