I started out using an early version of Komodo 4 and, despite random crashes and hangs (especially during debugging) I found it a very useful tool. I was especially pleased that they had a heavy discount for a 'personal' version (1/10 the price of the pro version) and ended us buying a personal edition at home and a pro edition at work. In fact that price structure made up for many of the bugs, crashes and hangs.

However with version 5 they dropped the personal edition and bumped the price of the pro version - I was not happy and resisted upgrading to 5 for several years, despite they had fixed a bug I'd submitted against 4 in 5. I've now upgraded to 5 and it does have a lot of nice new stuff and is a lot more stable than the 4 series was. But I'm still pissed off that they don't offer the personal edition any more, to the extent that I no longer evangalize for Komodo - are you listening ActiveState?

The real problem is: Komodo does not have a rival IMHO. Once you try it, you never look back :) Eclipse is clumsier and uglier than Komodo the last time I checked. Maybe Padre can rival it at some point, but it's just a baby now. And I agreee about the 4x series, it was crashing a lot. I feel comfortable in Komodo but it's way too expensive and no discounts for even open source project licensing (for example). At least they offer Komodo Edit for free though...

Once you try it, you never look back :)

Proper verb-age is "Once I try it, I never look back"

I started out using an early version of Komodo 4 and, despite random crashes and hangs

That was because your were late to the game, you should have bought version 3.1 like I did! :) 3.1 was pretty stable for me.

As for the upgrading to the Pro edition, $300, for my personal use? What am I getting, bug fixes for older editions, GRRR, extended support for PHP and Python, why would I want that? Those were the two big things I have seen added to Komodo and neither of them represented a $300 value to me.

And if I am going to get any more value of it besides it being a syntax checking application, I would need to add short-cuts using the toolbox( shortcuts for commands to run against the current code). If I have to extend functionality myself, why would I pay someone for that?

Komodo is $100 editor, and nothing more, until is starts looking and acting like a true IDE(like Visual Studio), I ain't gonna spend a dime more for it.

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.

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True laziness is hard work

I too purchased Komodo IDE about a year ago. Mostly happy. Does what I want and the interface ain't too bad. I had been using Eclipse + EPIC before that (which was slow and prone to crashing on all machines I used it).

I've started playing with Padre lately and I think it's pretty darn cool. Had a bit of a time getting it working on my Mac but on my Ubuntu box it was pretty easy. I love that it's pluggable and has some nifty stuff out there. I love that it's geared to Perl too!

... and it's written in Perl... how cool is that?

http://padre.perlide.org

Sometimes I activate Emacs-Code-Browser to have a more Kommodo/Eclipse-like look and feel.

Plus cperl-mode and sepia and some self-written(!) macros doing text-transformations (mostly wrapping perlcode, because I'm still mostly lost in elisp ;-) + self-written(!) keybindings do what I want.

fly-make-mode and auto expands improve my coding speed dramatically.

Emacs is on every platform, it's free, using gnuclient makes the startup fast as lightning, and it can be used without X in console-mode (e.g. while login with ssh on another machine).

Well there are so many flavors of setting up emacs ... but last time I saw Komodo edit it was for sure much slower than emacs.

Anyway it's difficult to compare different IDEs w/o any specific list of "important features" in a "common language" (i.e. do VI-user understand what I mean with fly-make mode?), such that you risk comparing apples and peaches...

You should start giving us a list of features you consider important with some explanation such that you can get a valid comparison.

PS: A friend pointed me to textmate, which seems very nice but is restricted to MacOs. Looking for emulation of the very strong snippet feature I found yasnippet.el for emacs. 8)

Good point. I'd like the following:

• Dynamic syntax checking (like spell checking).
• Debugging (single step, see values and set values).
• Supports common langauges (at least Perl and HTML, C++ would be nice)
• Useful crash analysis information
• Automated unit testing and regression testing would be nice to have.
• Search and replace.
• Macros to repeat often used commands.
• And this one: Translate - to switch between supported languages (eg Perl and C++).

What about you?

• Dynamic syntax checking (like spell checking).

  M-x fly-make-mode

• Debugging (single step, see values and set values).

  M-x perldb

• Supports common langauges (at least Perl and HTML, C++ would be nice)

  M-x cperl-mode or html-mode or ...

• Useful crash analysis information

  "crash"??? if you start mode-compile in emacs you get an output-window, each error is highlighted and klicking jumps into the source. otherwise, do you have a working example of what you want?

• Automated unit testing and regression testing would be nice to have.

  ??? do you have a working example of the degree of automation you want?

• Search and replace.

  Emacs has incremental search and regex search

• Macros to repeat often used commands.

  yes ...

• And this one: Translate - to switch between supported languages (eg Perl and C++).

  Translate??? you mean to generate a c-program out of a perl-program and vice versa?

  otherwise, do you have a working example of waht you want?

  Cheers Rolf

Oh and while I'm at it I'd like a graphical designer too, but if I'm being really choosey I'd like one that deals with looping, for instance on a notebook with a variable number of pages.

yes I mean generate a c-program out of a perl-program and vice versa. the other day I took a bit of logic out of an old .asp program and with a few global edits, it turned into a working perl subroutine

Are you serious?

Thats far beyond what an IDE (or Komodo) can do, IDEs just integrate different (mostly external) development tools into one consistent environement.

Anyway if you know any AI program, which does this magical conversion, you can plug it in most editors I know.

In emacs you can select a textregion (e.g. a function), pipe it to an external program and replace the region with the output. All thsi triggered with one keystroke that you can define.

BTW: Thats the way I use perltidy ...

Cheers Rolf

UPDATE: Recommended read: Perl to C Converter? 8)

I'm genuinely surprised that there's any Monks that thinks differently.

Still, you live and learn :-)

I don't know which software you may be referring to, but Komodo at least saves files before launching the debugger. Although Komodo had a propensity (now resolved) to lock up or crash during debugging I've never lost any work as a result, just a little time and nothing like as much time as the debugger has saved.

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True laziness is hard work

I just decided to try a trial version of Komodo yesterday. It crashes pretty consistently (every couple of hours), and regularly locks up for periods of 30 seconds or more. It even makes the WinXP system unstable long after it's finished crashing, believe it or not. As much as I want to on the fly error checking and intellitype type features I'm not willing to put up with the instability of it. Back to Notepad++. =/

Yes I agree with that, but the crashes I was referring to were crashes of my application being developed. Usually I get a crash and it says "You haven't declared $nnnn" or something clever like that. However, sometimes it's just so horrified at something I've done, it goes mute. Then I have to start putting in print statements and stuff. However another nice feature is, even if you haven't saved your latest change with a new file name, you can control-z through all the work you done since you started the application to the last working version. If you put your PC on standby overnight, you can save the current version and then ctrl-z through several days of work to find the change that threw it. I've never lost any work as a result of it's foibles. Regards.