Random Perl ... rant

[Iain Barnett]

On 3 Apr 2008, at 10:01 am, Stefano Rodighiero wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 3, 2008 at 10:44 AM, Iain Barnett <iainspeed at gmail.com>  
> wrote:
>
>>  If you want to draw in programmers from other languages then you  
>> can't show
>> them a command line debugger and colorised emacs and expect  
>> converts. I want
>> intellisense, and I want a GUI for debugging, and so do a lot of  
>> other
>> people *because it makes us more productive and our lives easier*,  
>> which is
>> the whole point. Isn't it?
>
> While for Java or C# a good GUI can make the difference, I think
> that for dynamic and succint languages like Perl it only depends
> on personal style: I feel productive with a shell, Vim, and some
> ad hoc macros.
>
> S.

I was at the London Perl Workshop, and one of the lightning talks was  
by someone (can't remember who, sorry) who'd come up with  
autocompletion in emacs, and most of the audience wanted it.

I'm sure if someone had come up with a GUI for debugging too, then  
most people would've shouted out "Yes!" to the question, "Would this  
be useful?".

I don't know why a dynamic language can't benefit from these things?  
Perl isn't that more succinct than C#, and they both share a  
character set.

Iain