Slashdot Mirror

This is the programming system that is so powerful that the virus writers all use it for those HTML and Outlook email viruses. And the documentation is very complete and thorough. And it's on every windows machine. These languages also have an object model that can be used to program every aspect of a windows client or server machine, including active directory. Look up WMI and ADSI to learn how to use VBSCript and JScript to totally control your windows system or entire network. Also, you can look up those two keywords on Amazon if you want to spring for a book. Furthermore, there are web sites with lots of free scripts that run on Windows.

Plus, you can get free cygwin tools from cygwin.com that will enable you to program in all those GCC languages.

Plus, you can download a FREE Java environment from the Sun website. Mostly command line.

Plus, you can download for FREE, the entire suite of .NET Framework programming tools, at this web page, provided you are willing to live with Command Line tools! You are slashdot, are you willing to live with command line tools to use FREE C# and so on? It's a big download, though.

Plus, you can download FREE perl and Python, already compiled and adopted to Windows from Active State.

Wait -- there's more! Batch files! The latest 32 bit OS's have a powerful batch system with real if-then-else structure! And, on XP, it's even documented !.

Wait -- there's more! Inside Cygwin, there's emacs, and inside emacs, there's Elisp!.

Complete enough for you?

No? Okay how about free command line C++ compiler from Borland?

ActiveState: Python, Perl, Tcl, etc for Windows.

Well, I use it to export NFS shares and it works just fine. I don't use the source code compatibility stuff or the tools - you're right they're half-assed - I use cygwin and the ActiveState stuff instead.

I guess that's why they have Perl.Net and Managed Extensions for C++, huh?
PerlNet

Although this has nothing to do with Linux TCO vs. Windows TCO, here goes:

list of open file handles - how about Handle

list of bound ports - how about TCPView

robust scripting language - how about ActivePerl

All of the above tools are free, high quality, and easy to install/use on WIndows 2K/XP. I automatically install them along with many other tools whenever I prep a new Windows 2K/XP machine. And to think I'm not even an MCSE...

• Wing IDE
• eric3
• Visual Python
• Others...

Oops! Komodo is ActiveState's IDE, based on Mozilla tech.

Nobody in their right mind is going to name a project after guano, though. You may be on to something there.

Python has 'break' and 'continue' like C. But these only affect the innermost loop. Is there a way to break out of an enclosing loop? (In Perl you can label a loop and then say 'next LABEL', etc.)

Like Java and Lisp -- and unlike Perl -- Python has exception handling. The structured way to get out of an inner loop is the same as the structured way to get out of a deeply nested function call: raise an exception, and trap it at the higher level where you want to "go to".

How can I pass a variable by reference? For example, to take a reference to a string, pass it to a function and have that function modify the string passed in. More generally, is there a way to store references?

In Python, everything is a reference, but strings are immutable objects. There's no such thing as "modifying the string passed in" -- all the built-in string functions return a new string. However, for mutable types such as lists and dictionaries, functions can certainly modify their arguments, as in this example:

def foo(lst): lst.append("beer")
y = ["wine"]
foo(y) # y is now ["wine", "beer"]

Python advertises its support for first-class functions, but I can't seem to get closures to work. The 'lambda' keyword won't accept assignment or even sequencing inside the function body.

Especially since I have some Scheme in my programming background, this is a quirk I find annoying about Python: lambda is underpowered. It's comparable to the old BASIC "DEF FN" in that it allows only expressions, not statements, in the lambda-body.

However, you can do what you want by defining a function with a temporary name, using def, and returning it. (In Python it is perfectly valid to have function definitions inside other function definitions, and it does what you expect: defines functions whose names have local scope, but can be returned.) You can also create callable classes, which act like functions instead of object factories. There's an implementation of curry for instance in the Python Cookbook, which does this. Check it out.

Is there a do/while statement in Python? Plain 'while' is there but occasionally an 'at least once' loop is what you need. Is there an addon package or library for Python that provides a 'do' construct?

There is neither a do/while nor a repeat/until in Python. Again this is something I don't agree with, but the argument is that this keeps the number of redundant keywords down. The convention is to use while loops and escape with break when necessary.

Has anyone ever made a Perl IDE?

I really like Komodo.

ActiveState makes a perl plugin for VS.Net. Visual Perl

Anyway, ActiveState produces Komodo, a perl IDE, and they also sell a perl environment for Visual Studio .NET.

I still write perl in vim, but I do use ddd for debugging my code.

An experimental Python for .NET with full source and a whitepaper from our friends at ActiveState.

An experimental Python for .NET with full source and a whitepaper from our friends at ActiveState.

Emacs? You know, if people used to say "Emacs is a nice OS, but I prefer UNIX", there is a reason. :-)

GNU Emacs / XEmacs is to text editors what Mozilla is to web browsers (well, to "mere HTML renderers with some buttons attached" would be more appropriate). I'd go further and say that Mozilla is definitively the 21st century Emacs (a proof? Komodo).

SleepyCat (Berkely DB)
Zope Corporation (Zope)
Covalent Technologies (Apache)
ActiveState

I deliberately haven't included Apple for reasons cited above, but Apple is almost as much a software company as it is a hardware company.

There's a PerlTray sample in the ActiveState Perl Dev Kit 5.0 that pulls the current threat level from the Homeland Security webpage. Cute, but Windows only though...

There's a PerlTray sample in the ActiveState Perl Dev Kit 5.0 that pulls the current threat level from the Homeland Security webpage. Cute, but Windows only though...

Not that this is on topic by any means, but here is a response.

Of the established solutions for compiling Perl into executables, at the forefront are IndigoStar's Perl2EXE and ActiveState's PerlApp. Both are commercial products. I've not had a reasonable impetus to buy either, but programs like AmphetaDesk, an RSS aggregator written in Perl, make impressive use of Perl2EXE. There may be a point in the future at which I might happily buy it--it just depends on the end I'm trying to meet with a given project. Sometimes preaching the freedom-of-software concept makes us forget that things can be worth money...

There's also perlcc, which comes standard with Perl, but it's in a "very experimental" stage and not recommended for production code.

So, there are options.

Of course, you aren't being a zealot by mentioning the advantages of one language over another. I've enjoyed reading all of the (reasonable) point/counterpoint comparisons between Python and Perl. I personally don't do enough programming in any of the areas where Python surpasses Perl's usefulness to make a serious switch. Perhaps in the future, I will.

What doesn't make sense is one's assumption that because he writes code in one language instead of another he is somehow of a superior race of beings. If there's any measure of superiority to be had, it more appropriately belongs to those who are familiar with (or even those who are willing to learn) more languages and environments and all of the necessary tricks and idioms to write an intelligent solution within any one of them.

But even if this is something that properly defines one's superiority, making a nuisance of oneself screaming about said superiority does an incredible lot to negate it.

Generic segue, an article about the BOFH becoming passé caught my eye today...

Idioms:

set fsd [fileselectiondialog #auto -background red]

What's so bad about that? There's no reason to worry so much about scoping of procs (which is what both Tk widgets and incr Tcl class instances become) most of the time.

If you want event handlers from another scope use the appropriate [code] to magicify the callback. As for stuff escaping scope, the incr Tcl local proc helps a bit with that.

Idioms:

set fsd [fileselectiondialog #auto -background red]

What's so bad about that? There's no reason to worry so much about scoping of procs (which is what both Tk widgets and incr Tcl class instances become) most of the time.

If you want event handlers from another scope use the appropriate [code] to magicify the callback. As for stuff escaping scope, the incr Tcl local proc helps a bit with that.

the biggest practical problems with Tcl/Tk I find are that a lot of extensions still aren't part of it

You should really consider the upgrade to 8.4 because there is several years more development in it. New widgets, updated features, much faster, etc.

You should really consider the upgrade to 8.4 because there is several years more development in it. New widgets, updated features, much faster, etc.

You should really consider the upgrade to 8.4 because there is several years more development in it. New widgets, updated features, much faster, etc.

I couldn't believe all the questions before you can download this stuff!
Look here:

Geez, some people. Oh yeah, get the crack yourself.

• The Windows 2000 Resource Kit
• The Microsoft Script Center. Hundreds (thousands?) of VB/WS scripts you can execute from the CLI. Browse!
• The PSTools Suite from Sysinternals. Excellent for filling in any gaps in Microsoft's lineup.
• And, if all else fails, The Unix95 pack with such nice things as 'which','cp','tail','gzip','nice', ... and many more, all for the WinNT/Win2k CLI.
  
  
• Oh, and ActiveState Perl for Windows, of course :)

It's a shame so many people are taking this "oh god don't lock us in" stance. To me, and people will disagree with this, .NET is the Sun/Java 'write once, run anywhere' concept done right because it's:

- Language Independant (although I would agree that C# seems best suited to it for me)
- Potentially Platform Independant (not yet, maybe not soon, but possible - well done to the Mono team)
- Generally runs faster than Java on Windows ('big surprise' you say - but see how Mono goes)

This isn't even mentioning the fact that developers can gather together to work on a software project using .NET, and can contribute regardless of their language of choice.

Naturally there's barriers to such a thing actually happenning. For example, imagine reading the source code to a large project developed in such a manner: where My.Namespace.Person is written in C#, My.Namespace.BusDriver is written in J#, My.Namespace.BusinessManager is written in VB.NET and My.Namespace.HospitalityManager is written in Managed C++. In such a scenario, Person would be the base class of BusDriver and BusinessManager, and HospitalityManager would be derived from BusinessManager.

Thus to understand that relatively small section of a project (four classes!) you need to know four separate languages. Obviously, a good design will save a person from having to do such a thing. Unfortunately, good designs are hard to come by. Harder still is following a good design to the letter. Although you can argue otherwise, the fact of the matter is that we haven't yet perfected the art/science of software engineering at its current level of complexity - why make it more complex?

That said, there's nothing to stop you from developing with, for example, C# as your main language then using Python or Perl for handling complex text files.

As previously stated, so far as I'm aware there's no more 'lock-in' to .NET than there is to other Microsoft (and indeed some non-Microsoft) software. I've spoken to various companies here in Australia and few of them are even thinking about installing the .NET CLR on their Windows systems - let alone their servers.

I think the biggest problem with .NET for managers is a lack of understanding. .NET has a bit of an identity crisis in that it seems hard to define what it is in layman terms, and the technical terms tend to evolve from simple two-line explanations into long, drawn-out descriptions of the CLR and assemblies.

It's a simple concept that I feel is hard to convey. How do others feel regarding this?

Anyway I'm rambling now. Outies :)

Tom L

I've used it for awhile. It basically has 3 parts: NFS (client and server), korn shell (and really basic utils), and Perl. (It also has a revamped telnet server, but so what?) The NFS stuff is... well, NFS. I hate NFS. (For some reason, I keep getting it cocked up such that I need a reboot.) The shell is worthless. The Perl is ActiveState's version, and you can get that for free anyway.

If you really want to put a bunch of Unix tools on Windows, you ought to look at CygWin. I've tested it only briefly, and it's even got an X server. In that regard, it's pretty cool. You can load what bits you want and leave the rest out.

The problem with putting Unix tools on Windows is that it's still Windows. I'm not trying to be funny here. The main advantage of having a shell is being able to administrate the system under which the shell is running. While it might be nice to do some awk'ing and sed'ing natively under Windows, you still can't do a whole lot of administration with it. Let's face it, for more than a few lines of shell script, Perl's a better way to go these days. At that point, what's the use of spending money on this product? NFS? Just put samba on your NFS servers instead and quit fooling around with the clients.

...my school district just installed php onto their IIS (long story, freakin morons...) server. so, since i won't touch asp (whatever bastardized incarnation m$ decides this week) i figured i'd convert alot of our site to php.

Why didn't you just carry on using perl? You can use perl with iis just fine.

Not really ports to the platform itself, but great productivity boosters regardless. I've used VisualPython with VS.NET 1.0 and it rocks.

Not really ports to the platform itself, but great productivity boosters regardless. I've used VisualPython with VS.NET 1.0 and it rocks.

ActiveState started out porting Perl to windows for Microsoft to put on the Resource Kit CD. They've funded and helped quite a lot of ActiveState's development. They have not yet killed them, nor shown any sign that they wish to.

to even get into perl or GCC right from the strat you need a PC that runs Linux into the command line.

Or a CD that installs ActivePerl and a simple C++ IDE from autorun. Sell those for $9.95 at Wal*Mart in a box marked "make your own video games for your PC!"

but GCC, that is a compiled language and the act of a simple compile while being easy, can be confuing after wards, not to mention haveing to learn all the options and how to link multiple files, how to create a make file, etc.

When I was first starting out on GCC, I used RHIDE. Only later did I learn makefiles. If it was easy enough for me when I was in high school... But then, I was doing Applesoft BASIC + 6502 assembly language when I was in middle school.

frankly, I think python is the new basic

Tell me about it.

I think perhaps the issue is a confusion of a platform versus a language.

What makes .NET powerful is the platform as well as the languages like C#. .NET is not a clone of Java, because it offers so much more than just Java. C# is a clone of the Java grammar, perhaps.

Then to make it even more confusing, nothing precludes you from running Python on top of .NET.

I happen to like C# as well as .NET for what it provides to me as a developer. Back in '97 or so I took a look at Java and while I did like the language grammar, I was rather appalled with the platform and it's implementations. We do have some people using Java here at work and many of those implementation problems with the platform still exist. I think Sun made some horrid design decisions, and doesn't have the fortitude to stand behind those and fix them. I don't have that same concern with Microsoft.

From a religious perspective maybe that's an issue to you, but I am more concerned with my ability to provide technical solutions. I try to avoid religion when possible.

You said "Mozilla is furthering the agenda of a very large corporation" which I would agree with. Mozilla furthers the agenda of several other companies as well: OEone, ActiveState, IBM, etc... But Mozilla could not do that alone. If Mozilla has played a part in furthering Netscape's agenda, Netscape has played an even bigger part in furthering Mozilla's agenda. The staff and drivers of mozilla.org try hard to ensure that happens.

This may not be the best example (there are many others that would suit better) but I was reading bug 7 0 7 4 6 at the time, and figured I would post a few comments from it:

------- Additional Comment #13 From Blake Ross 2001-03-20 14:35 -------

By the way, having sat on these changes for over two weeks (and enduring
multiple merge conflicts), I'm not particularly interested in waiting until
someone finds the time to fix the other commercial cases. These changes are
going to break Alphanumerica and MozDev products also, as well as potentially
any other xul-based app out there, and while I'm certainly willing to help,
they're not waiting until every commercial vendor's branch is ready (such is
pre-1.0 development).

------- Additional Comment #17 From David Hyatt 2001-03-20 16:21 -------

Blake, I feel your pain, but I work for Netscape, and therefore can't approve a
patch that will bust up the commercial tree.

Are there any volunteers to convert the rest of commercial (outside of AIM)? I
would do it myself, but this kind of bug just kills my hands.

------- Additional Comment #18 From Mike Shaver 2001-03-20 17:05 -------

Hyatt: acting as module owner, you certainly _can_ permit a change that will
break a closed source base, especially after the developer (Blake) has gone to
such reasonable lengths to get someone to fix said closed source base. There
are lots of other source trees, as Blake points out, that will break because of
this (in the short term), and he's offered to help with the ones whose authors
are not actively preventing them from providing such assistance (as is
Netscape/AOL, in this case). We held off until 0.8.1 to minimize the pain of
this checkin, and the time has come to bear what pain remains.

If you don't feel that your employer will let you fulfill your
Mozilla-module-owner responsibilities, please let us know, because that's the
kind of problem that we have to solve quickly.

------- Additional Comment #19 From Brendan Eich 2001-03-20 17:42 -------

Module owners whose employers pay them to keep commercial add-ons working along
with their Mozilla modules have to wear two hats: one for their employer, one
for Mozilla. If there's a conflict, Mozilla wins, or we need a new module owner
(at least _pro tem_). Life's rough. Let's get these changes landed.

It sounds like all but Mac builds have been tested in any case. True?

/be

If Perl had an IDE that was as easy to use it would dominate the world. (more than it already does)

ActiveState sells a plugin for Visual Studio .NET called Visual Perl that gives you all the functionality of the VS.NET environment with the language you love. (Don't worry, Python lovers... ActiveState makes Visual Python as well)

I don't work for ActiveState, but I do love a lot of the features in Visual Studio .NET, so I thought it was note-worthy. I guess the integrated development environment is an advance?

If Perl had an IDE that was as easy to use it would dominate the world. (more than it already does)

ActiveState sells a plugin for Visual Studio .NET called Visual Perl that gives you all the functionality of the VS.NET environment with the language you love. (Don't worry, Python lovers... ActiveState makes Visual Python as well)

I don't work for ActiveState, but I do love a lot of the features in Visual Studio .NET, so I thought it was note-worthy. I guess the integrated development environment is an advance?

If Perl had an IDE that was as easy to use it would dominate the world. (more than it already does).

There are many. Others have mentioned Komodo and the Visual Perl plugin for Visual Studio.NET.

There's also Perl Builder, which people rave about but I have not tried. They claim to be the most popular Perl IDE.

I would also like to add that an Open Source one, Open Perl IDE is decent. I use it at home.

I use Komodo at work (because it can act as an IDE for other languages like XSLT) and really like the Perl and Regular Expression debuggers.

-bp

If Perl had an IDE that was as easy to use it would dominate the world. (more than it already does).

There are many. Others have mentioned Komodo and the Visual Perl plugin for Visual Studio.NET.

There's also Perl Builder, which people rave about but I have not tried. They claim to be the most popular Perl IDE.

I would also like to add that an Open Source one, Open Perl IDE is decent. I use it at home.

I use Komodo at work (because it can act as an IDE for other languages like XSLT) and really like the Perl and Regular Expression debuggers.

-bp

Actually I believe ActiveState makes a compiler plugin for Visual Studio .NET that allows you to use VS .NET as an IDE for Perl and Python.

It really is quite slick and works well.

http://www.activestate.com/Products/Visual_Perl/?_ x=1

and

http://www.activestate.com/Products/Visual_Python/ ?_x=1

Actually I believe ActiveState makes a compiler plugin for Visual Studio .NET that allows you to use VS .NET as an IDE for Perl and Python.

It really is quite slick and works well.

http://www.activestate.com/Products/Visual_Perl/?_ x=1

and

http://www.activestate.com/Products/Visual_Python/ ?_x=1

If Perl had an IDE that was as easy to use it would dominate the world. (more than it already does)

How about Visual Perl from ActiveState?

If Perl had an IDE that was as easy to use it would dominate the world. (more than it already does)

How about Visual Perl from ActiveState?

Messenger:Amsn

If you really have to run it in windows download ActiveTcl It's basically a clone of MSN so you probably wouldn't need to.

Graphics: The gimp isn't all that different from its Windoze counterparts is it?

But perl scripts are just as easy to run as .exe files, so long as you have the perl interpreter installed. So now it's just a two step process:

1. Install perl.
2. Install the perl script.

This is not exactly brain surgery. Perl can be installed on essentially any system you choose to name, with no more trouble than installing any other executable. For those people running Windows, there's an excellent port available from Activestate. As somebody else pointed out, this means that a perl script is actually available to more people than a .exe would be, because it's truly cross-platform.

There's a Review of Komodo 2.0 (printer/human friendly version) by Simon Cozens on Perl.com from October 09, 2002:

"Every time I get a new copy of ActiveState's Komodo IDE, I do a review that invariably ends "this would be the perfect IDE for me if I were the sort of person who used IDEs". And every time I get the next release, I get closer to being persuaded I should be using IDEs. With Komodo 2.0, ActiveState is getting very, very close to persuading me - but it's not there yet. Let's see what it got right and got wrong this time. (...)"

Read the whole thing, it's more objective than the ActiveState's review. I personally don't use IDEs at all, like Simon Cozens, and I find his review much more interesting from my point of view. If I am to ever start using IDEs I have to know not if it's good for an IDE, but if it's good for people who prefered using Emacs/vi so far.

Did anyone else realize that you need to buy the commercial ($300) version to develop open-source applications?

Nope. But then again, I only looked at their Pricing and licensing page. Care to give us a link to the the page where you got your info?

komodo from activestate is a stunning example.

There are a couple of very interesting examples developed using this technology out already:

• OEOne, a complete desktop environment.
• Kimodo, a python and perl IDE.

Komodo 2.0 : a commercial IDE for multiple languages: Perl, Python, PHP, Tcl, XSLT. I've not tried it, but it looks interresting.