I was a Windows programmer for years using ActiveState, then Strawberry Perl, then I totally switched to using Linux (OpenSUSE) for writing code in Perl. I mention this because I gradually weaned myself away from always thinking that I needed a GUI.

"...GUI where I can see the Perl program variables..." You don't need a GUI to see program variables:

perl -d foo.pl
...
Loading DB routines from perl5db.pl version 1.3
Editor support available.

Enter h or `h h' for help, or `man perldebug' for more help.

main::(foo.pl:9):    my $limit = 100_000_000;
  DB<1> n
main::(foo.pl:10):    my $zip_file = "zipfile.zip";
  DB<1> p $limit
100000000
  DB<2>
[download]

Sure, with a GUI you can have a pretty list of variables with expandable sections, etc., but the point I'm trying to make is that you shouldn't need them to see variable values.