I use Visual Studio heavily at work and Komodo somewhat, which reflects the balance between the amount of C++ and the amount of Perl I develop. In most ways Komodo is at least as good as an integrated debugger as VS - better than VS2009 in fact where MS have broken fundamental stuff such as breakpoints!

For the stuff I do at work and where the productivity boost justifies the cost the price of the pro version is not a disincentive. For the Perl programming that I do at home, for which there is no remuneration and the productivity boost is less relevant, the cost of the pro version of Komodo is a complete blocker. The 'personal edition' that was available for Komodo 3.x was great for a my home use and I was responsible for the purchase of three copies - 2 x pro for work and personal for home.

Stability is a good reason to upgrade actually. 5.1 is much more stable, especially during debugging, than 3.x was. It was exactly that issues that drove me to upgrading at work. Actually, now I think about it, it was 3.x I was using. Komodo changed their price structure going to 4 and pissed me off to the extent I held off until well into the 5.x life cycle before upgrading.

When I refer to VS being better than Komodo, I mean that the overall experience is better. For example, to configure language-specific syntax highlighting is a chore. Configuring more complicated parts of the application are not intuitive and basically cuts out the overall utility of the application(example, the web server configuration environment). I am trying to do Perl development, not be a Komodo Application Specialist.

Another issue I have with Komodo is the application is building my applications. In VS, you are working on a 'Project' and so when you go to build it, it knows where everything is and how to run unit tests and gives compile time warnings for everything and which file it is a problem When you build it.

I would love for Komodo to create a standard CPAN distribution that I can install and 'build' as a project instead of just linking to all the files. I can create shortcuts to run individual commands, but when I using an IDE but that is what the IDE is supposed to do for you.

Another problem I have with Komodo is that is not just a Perl IDE, but PHP, and Python (and probalbly some other stuff as well) as well. While I understand it is trying to broaden its customer base, it does not really shine in comparison with IDE's that are floating around. At best it is just a mediocre experience. It is better than a text editor, but not a drastic change.

I am not a big fan of Microsoft's products, but I just cow-eyed when I see all the stuff that VS has to offer. I think Perl's popularity as a commercial language would drastically pick up if there was a VS-like application for Perl. I mean VS and Microsoft stuff is so popular not because it is a superior product, but because any idiot can turn out something in a few months of time and it does not look like crap. The backend maybe cluster-f**k but since when did most businesses bother looking at the backend code.

I think Perl's popularity as a commercial language would drastically pick up if there was a VS-like application for Perl.

I think the same, that's why I started Padre.

So maybe you want to help us define and implement the features Padre needs to have in order to become that VS-like application. Or better.

Hi Herkum,

Could you name some of the outstanding features VS has to offer? Maybe you want to add them to this thread: What are the criterias of a "good" Perl IDE? 8)

For instance, (from what I read from WP¹) do you mean the various WYSIWYG Editors (GUI,WEB, Classes,... ) or the "Edit and Continue" functionality of the debugger or what else?

Cheers Rolf

(1) most likely authored by MS's PR departement.