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Windows Installer has many benefits over installation software such as NSIS, old InstallShield (the non-Windows Installer versions), or other tools such as Inno Setup.

Windows Installer supports installation rollbacks, so failures restore the system exactly back to the state before installation began. I'm not sure if NSIS or other installers support rollbacks, but I have encountered installers in the past that left files everywhere when they quit after a failure.

I just set up a Windows network as a learning experience, and Windows Installer packages greatly simplify and automate software installation on the network. For example, I can install Office by doing an administrative install, which basically copies all the installation files to a network location, and then assigning Office to network users via a couple clicks. Office is automatically installed when the computer restarts. This works with all Windows Installer packages that support an administrative install; places such ActiveState even provide MSI packages for Python and Perl.

In addition to administrative installs, Windows Installer also supports application advertisement, which basically does things such as add only shortcuts or file associations. The program is automatically installed when the user clicks the shortcut or attempts to open a file.

There is also built-in package repair because Windows Installer keeps track of installed components. You can find more information about these and other features here.

Mind you, Windows Installer technology itself is free, and the database system it uses is documented at MSDN. There are freeware MSI authoring tools such as Advanced Installer, and I recall seeing a web-based tool on SourceForge for modifying MSI packages. Your statement that Windows Installer adds a ton of crap your C drive which are not related to the actual program being installed is also unproven.

If you want small and fast installers with tools such as Inno Setup, by all means go ahead and use them, but they do make things more difficult for network administrators.

I wouldn't lump ASP and Perl together. Especially since you can use Perl in ASP....

That said, comparing VBScript to Perl is like comparing Brainfuck to Smalltalk. VBScript is an unholy beast. It's like it was designed to make you do as much kludging as possible to get the simplest job done. It may just be my experience, but I enjoy programming in Perl. VBScript on the other hand, feels like building a house with a hacksaw and a hammer.

Who would have though that a mainframe manufacturer would keep prompting dead langauges? <g>

Whilst Algol isn't there, Oberon is, as is Ada, a shareware version of Forth, Haskell, Eifell, Pascal, Perl, Python (twice) and SmallTalk

Who would have though that a mainframe manufacturer would keep prompting dead langauges? <g>

Whilst Algol isn't there, Oberon is, as is Ada, a shareware version of Forth, Haskell, Eifell, Pascal, Perl, Python (twice) and SmallTalk

I'm not very familiar with Parrot

I'm not very familiar with Parrot

A very good illustration of this is in the attempt to create a Python.NET implementation by the folks at ActiveState. The report on the lessons learned is rather enlightening.

I could use some wicked cool batch files.

Forget "batch files", and simply get the Windows version of wicked cool .

(Seriously!)

"Give up trying to be a "platform". Not gonna happen."

You nust be use to being ignored.
Oeone and Komodo

There's one thing that I dont see on the list (Mod python). But I think that even with MP's inclusion, Python lacks the depth and quality of CPAN for web server integration. There is no simply no comparable resouce for usable tested code in Python like Perls CPAN.

Python integrates into gui's better. This something (currently) where perl sucks really (being embedded). Python also runs on windows extremely well. This is somthing Perl via Activestate tries but has yet to pull off. For some everything requires a hammer. For me it's python on the desktop, perl at the server.

I had made many TK-perl appz (on win XP) compiled with Visual Studio 7, and everything is running fine on *unix and mac.
(I had less pain in tk-perl then using html+dhtml to be compatible with the above 3 OS.)

Hey and most of it is FREE. - (So stop it blaming on module incompatiblitys)

• www.indigostar.com (perl 2 exe)
• dada.perl.it
• (Each Win32 APIs or third-party or even homegrown DLLs are usable with perl.)
• Oreilly Perl bookshelf
• containing six books.

Komodo activestate.com is in my opinion one of the best editors and debuggers in this world. (Beside the new web package manager is a little bit buggy, but everything else works fine... And be sure to take a look at the great regex evaluator.)

And of course dont miss Larry Wall "O'Reilly Perl Programming" or Programming Ansi C by Brian W.Kernighan and Dennis M.Ritchie

Eighter i think you couldn't be a good unix admin without the knowledge and the module section of pe(A)rl.

Visual Perl requires the Perl Dev Kit to create .NET or ActiveX components.

Visual Perl requires the Perl Dev Kit to create .NET or ActiveX components.

They so know that if they were to open up the CLR of their .net Technology, and like, allow people to write their own CLR languages, their stock would plummet.

Um, people can write their own CLR languages. Quite a few have. Hell, they even let Borland play.

Perl

Python

FORTRA

More FORTRAN

SmallTalk alike (SmallScript)

Mondrian

Pascal

Scheme

Mercury

Eiffel

Oberon

Cobol

Ya know what's annoying? Having to type in a bunch of random crap at the end of a message because slashdot does now seem to like having a low number of characters per line.

They so know that if they were to open up the CLR of their .net Technology, and like, allow people to write their own CLR languages, their stock would plummet.

Um, people can write their own CLR languages. Quite a few have. Hell, they even let Borland play.

Perl

Python

FORTRA

More FORTRAN

SmallTalk alike (SmallScript)

Mondrian

Pascal

Scheme

Mercury

Eiffel

Oberon

Cobol

Ya know what's annoying? Having to type in a bunch of random crap at the end of a message because slashdot does now seem to like having a low number of characters per line.

Last I checked, many (most) Linux IDEs weren't available under OS X:

• BlackAdder
• Boa Constructor
• Eric (not sure)
• Komodo
• WideStudio
• Wing

You can get the free ActivePerl distribution for Windows. They also have a Python distribution, which works perfectly and is incredibly useful.

...that we're "more technical" because we have better toys. Having any modern Linux distribution is like having a honking great Lego (tm) collection (top toy, and it runs under MS-Windows as well). Having MS-Windows is like having Barbie dolls - sure they look pretty, and have all of these neat (and expensive) accessories, but after you've posed them in variations of six different ways, that's about it for imagination. For kids, it's time to rip the legs off and see what makes them go.

The shiny stuff in modern Linux distros (KDE, GNOME etc) is like modern Lego in that it is kind of pre-built. This takes some of the fun out of it but also saves doing some repetitive tasks (e.g. "assemble Bob the Builder model") and more accurately represents small objects.

PS, I very seldom "compile my own software" (although I've been doing a lot of it this last week for customers). When I do, I sing halleliujahs for the ability to do it, sadly absent in much MS-Windows software. But for 99% of what I do, eminently suitable "shrink-wrapped" versions exist, and most stuff is modular enough that BASH will glue it together if the existing stuff falls short.

Oh... that's right, you don't have BASH. Well, try the CygWin suite which includes it, and/or pull down a free PERL and have a go with that as a glue language.

I haven't had time to er, use usenet for ages. Google's interface is a pretty good newbie gateway to it.

...very well, I shall correct you. Try this page. The page you pointed at was ActiveState's funky IDE thing, ActivePerl is availably for no cost (And is actually pretty much just normal Perl with a funky different package management system so it'll work sanely in Windows).

i went to this page....
and correct me if i'm wrong, but you have to pay?

There's nothing wrong with ActiveState, except that they lag behind the main *nix releases

This is FUD. The standard release at times is far behind ActivePerl in providing bug fixes.

The patches that made ActivePerl 635 were basically released as Perl 5.6.2 (with some portability fixes) almost a year after ActivePerl 635 was released.

Here is a link to a p5p BOF about 5.6.2. I'll quote the interesting part:

A lot of bugs in 5.6.X are fixed in the ActiveState release and not in the general release. This needs to be fixed.

Didn't Preview, sorry:


What Windows IDE will do syntax highlighting for Python
How about PERL? ...

I kinda like this.

If you want free, check out Eclipse. Not sure if they have plugins yet, but you could always build one.

Why didn't they include ActivePerl?

In the article it rather sounds like they just assumed Python performance would be an indicator of performance for interpreted languages generally, but is there anything to back this up?

Cross language inheritance is nothing unique. Jython has it. Jython and C# came about at roughly the same time.

As other posters suggest, problems start when you realize that Java has single inheritance and Python has multiple. The same problem occurs when bridging C# and Python.

I guess everything looks better when it comes from M$ PR department.

In the spirit of the parent post:-

Some examples of industrial use of Mozilla technologies

At my place of business, we use Network Associates for our virus scanner (warning: PDF!). It is available with an enterprise control panel that other sites in my org enjoy. (I prefer to script out most of the deployment functions for my site.)

This, combined with good general IT practices, have kept us virus-free for quite some time. YMMV, of course :)

• The Bat! mail client (shareware)
• Opera browser/mail/newsclient (adware), much more lightweight than Mozilla
• 40tude Dialog newsclient
• Total Commander file manager (shareware)
• eMule peer-to-peer client (open source)
• ViM
• editor (open source)
• GhostScript and GSView for PostScript and PDF rendering/conversion/manipulation (open source)
• ActivePerl, ActivePython, ActiveTcl for scripting
• 7-zip packer

These are some of the free (speech or beer) software I'd install on a family, non-gaming machine:

• Web Browser: Mozilla or Mozilla Firebird
• E-mail: Mozilla (cross-platform), Mozilla Thunderbird (cross-platform), Evolution (Gnome), or KMail (KDE)
• Office Suite: OpenOffice.org
• Media Player: QuickTime (Windows), Zinf (cross-platform), RealPlayer (cross-platform), WinAmp (Windows), MPlayer (Windows), XMMS (Linux)
• Image Viewer: IrfanView (Windows)
• Instant Messaging: Gaim (cross-platform)
• Personal Information Management: Palm Desktop Software (great PIM suite even if you don't own a Palm)
• Other: Acrobat Reader (although I'm weary of their DRM), Java 2 Runtime Environment, Macromedia Flash and Shockwave players, Ad-Aware (spyware remover for Windows), ZoneAlarm, Sygate Personal Firewall (firewall, alternative to ZoneAlarm), Grisoft AVG Anti-Virus, FileZilla, WinRAR (not free, shareware with nag window), Ofoto desktop software (basic photo album and touch-ups, even if you don't use Ofoto's online services)

Some other software I'd install on my own desktop (dev), in decreasing order of importance:

• Cygwin, bascially all packages
• UltraEdit32 (45-day trial shareware)
• TightVNC
• Ghostscript and GSView
• Java 2 SDK
• Eclipse
• Borland JBuilder Personal
• ActiveState Perl, Python, Tcl/Tk (yes, even though they are in Cygwin), Jython
• GIMP
• POV-Ray
• At least one of Apache, Tomcat, or Plone (Zope)
• HTTrack (a website copier)

• OpenOffice to cover word processing and other office utilities.
• Pegasus for email.
• Mozilla Firebird for the browser.
• PuTTY to connect to your linux server (you do have one of those, right?).
• Winamp to play your music.
• ActivePerl because Perl scripts are so damn handy, regardless of the platform.

The Python vote is seconded. I got interested in this language a year ago because a co-worker was experimenting with it and loved it. I took 20 minutes to run through a tutorial - an hour I was proficient and had re-written our entire project's build and archival system in it. The langage is clean and logical - docs are awesome.

Now it seems like every test and tool application I write to support development of our major products - is in Python. It's just so much easier, faster - and stable - than the equivalent app in C would be given the same time constraints.

No web Python referal would be complete without mentioning the Zope framework. I've not used it, but I gather it's to web development as nuclear weapons are to hand grenades. So integral to the Python experience that the author of Python [created it / works there /worked there] I can't remember which, but it was one of the above.

Take 20 minutes to run through a Python tutorial as referenced from their main page, try making some simple scripts with it - and tell me you're not hooked.

Also: don't forget the Psyco just-in-time compiler which magically makes time-critical things faster without you doing anything.

Also 2: Bittorrent was written in Python and bundled into an executable with Py2exe! How's that for battle-tested! The user interface looks bad, but that's the author's fault. :)

Also 3: Check out the Win32All package for MFC wrapper libraries and the best free editor (Pythonwin).

Also 4: Activestate has a commercial Python implementation that may help (I've not used it, but someone must have a use for it).

The Python vote is seconded. I got interested in this language a year ago because a co-worker was experimenting with it and loved it. I took 20 minutes to run through a tutorial - an hour I was proficient and had re-written our entire project's build and archival system in it. The langage is clean and logical - docs are awesome.

Now it seems like every test and tool application I write to support development of our major products - is in Python. It's just so much easier, faster - and stable - than the equivalent app in C would be given the same time constraints.

No web Python referal would be complete without mentioning the Zope framework. I've not used it, but I gather it's to web development as nuclear weapons are to hand grenades. So integral to the Python experience that the author of Python [created it / works there /worked there] I can't remember which, but it was one of the above.

Take 20 minutes to run through a Python tutorial as referenced from their main page, try making some simple scripts with it - and tell me you're not hooked.

Also: don't forget the Psyco just-in-time compiler which magically makes time-critical things faster without you doing anything.

Also 2: Bittorrent was written in Python and bundled into an executable with Py2exe! How's that for battle-tested! The user interface looks bad, but that's the author's fault. :)

Also 3: Check out the Win32All package for MFC wrapper libraries and the best free editor (Pythonwin).

Also 4: Activestate has a commercial Python implementation that may help (I've not used it, but someone must have a use for it).

tkMoo-light has always been my favorite MUD client for Windows and *nix platforms. You'll need tcl/tk. For Windows, I prefer ActiveTcl from ActiveState

tkMoo-light has always been my favorite MUD client for Windows and *nix platforms. You'll need tcl/tk. For Windows, I prefer ActiveTcl from ActiveState

As an ActiveState employee, I can say that this is all good, even for the tools and open source languages side of our business. While Sophos' anti-virus products merge well with ActiveState's successful PureMessage anti-spam software, Sophos is fully aware of the value ActiveState has received from the tools and languages side as well.

All ActiveState employees will be sticking around, doing what they were doing before. We will continue to make the Active(Perl|Python|Tcl) language distributions and continue development on Komodo, TDK, PDK, etc.

There is more in the open letter here:
http://www.activestate.com/corporate/letter/

ActiveState's product lines for open source programmers will continue to be developed and sold under the ActiveState brand. As a division of Sophos, the existing ActiveState team is committed to continuing its support of the open source language community.

Agreed - there's alot PHP can learn from ASP.NET, in particular where Web Forms are concerned which is a great way of templating. It's a great class library.
What's a little depressing about .NET though is it's commitment to static typing (or lack of commitment to dynamic typing). MS isn't really doing anything with JScript on .NET and various attempts to port languages like Perl and Python to .NET seem to have floundered, many stating performance issues e.g. Python for .NET
Of course a verbose, statically typed language sells IDEs.
Anyway - my guess is someone will have a solid implementation Web Forms in PHP within then next 6 months.

> P.S. i like VS but recently switched to Python
>so I could run on ME and XP without having to
> compile for each

You can still have your VS and Python with Visual Python.

perl for .net

As for management authorisation, I was lucky - my manager was cool, he said if I wanted some GPL software to give him a copy of the licence and install the sw, which would then prompt him to read it. That was 18 months ago and he hasn't said anything yet. Oh, I forgot two , perl from either ActiveState or Indigo Star depending upon your particualr OS (Indigo works on older versions and includes Apache) and Regina Rexx because I like rexx (I used to be a mainframe guy) and it's the macro language for the Hessling editor. Of course Cygwin has the option of including perl there too, it's a matter of what you want to do. I went for ActiveState instead of Cygwin when I set up my work box as it was a later version - I should have checked which was the more stable. As cygwin is under continuous development (join the mailing lists) it's probably superceded ActiveState now.
HTH. (i'm sorry if anything is broken, as preview has done just that, if there's a problem I correct when /. allows the next post).

Some interesting reading:

PerlNET.

Perl for ASP.NET.

Python for .NET.

COBOL for .NET.

Eiffel for .NET.

Scheme for .NET .NET for Linux.

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Important Stuff:

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Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said.
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Problems regarding accounts or comment posting should be sent to CowboyNeal.

Some interesting reading:

PerlNET.

Perl for ASP.NET.

Python for .NET.

COBOL for .NET.

Eiffel for .NET.

Scheme for .NET .NET for Linux.

Lameness filter:
Important Stuff:

Please try to keep posts on topic.
Try to reply to other people's comments instead of starting new threads.
Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said.
Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about.
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your threshold on the User Preferences Page)
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Important Stuff:

Please try to keep posts on topic.
Try to reply to other people's comments instead of starting new threads.
Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said.
Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about.
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your threshold on the User Preferences Page)
Problems regarding accounts or comment posting should be sent to CowboyNeal.

Some interesting reading:

PerlNET.

Perl for ASP.NET.

Python for .NET.

COBOL for .NET.

Eiffel for .NET.

Scheme for .NET .NET for Linux.

Lameness filter:
Important Stuff:

Please try to keep posts on topic.
Try to reply to other people's comments instead of starting new threads.
Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said.
Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about.
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your threshold on the User Preferences Page)
Problems regarding accounts or comment posting should be sent to CowboyNeal.
Important Stuff:

Please try to keep posts on topic.
Try to reply to other people's comments instead of starting new threads.
Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said.
Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about.
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Except for learning and using the MS tools (Active Directory, IIS, ACLs etc.), making yourself a home is the best thing you can do.

Most *nix Software has been ported either directly by the developers (Emacs, Vim, nmap etc.), MinGW or CygWin. Insecure.org's tool list gives a nice overview over the essential networking programs and ActiveState has Ports of your three favourite scripting languages already.

[John Graham-Cumming has] responsibility for applying innovative email classification and learning
techniques to ActiveState's enterprise email filtering software, PureMessage

>Say, what's the fastest way to rename 1,000 files according to some regular expression on your Windows box?

Either use a current version of VBScript with the RegExp and FileSystemObject objects or use ActiveState's ActivePerl.

There's a similar Open Source award (although no fat sacks of cash included). Just a few days ago the ActiveState Active Awards were handed out at OSCON. These awards are given to those actively contributing in the Open Source world.

I know of at least three free debuggers. One is PDB. Another is PythonWin. And finally there is IDLE.

ActiveState uses mozilla in Komodo, a really good programming ide for Perl, PHP, Python, Tcl, and XSLT, and maybe for other products.
i have only seen Komodo, and it's a grat ide and makes good use of mozilla (it's embedded in their application).

ActiveState uses mozilla in Komodo, a really good programming ide for Perl, PHP, Python, Tcl, and XSLT, and maybe for other products.
i have only seen Komodo, and it's a grat ide and makes good use of mozilla (it's embedded in their application).

if I didn't read /. I wouldn't know what Python is

Check it out - or you might find Jython useful.