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Perlbox: A Unix Desktop Written in Perl

Posted by chrisd on from the more-than-just-system("bash") dept.

cascadefx writes "It appears that this programmer has created an Open Sourced Unix Desktop, PerlBox, written in Perl and Tk. I found this posted in response to an article on Perl Monks asking if Perl was obsessed with CGI?. Apparently not. Check it out, it looks pretty interesting." I wonder how fast it runs?

4 of 264 comments (clear)

  1. Why?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Because we can?

    I'd like to see distributing timesharing, so that all these people with *way* too much time on their hands could donate some to us people with sensible projects to complete but not enough time.

    1. Re:Why?! by obsidian+head · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Once you take the fun out of programming, it becomes dull & peoples' skills progressively get worse.

      There's place in the world for enjoyable wizardry. That means programming is still an art.

  2. Re:perl is teh sux0rz by rizzo5 · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Perl has rightfully been called a write only language

    gosh, i'm tired of hearing this.

    if you develop some actual coding discipline, you can write very maintanable code in perl. use generous ammounts of whitespace, develop style rules for yourself and stick to them religiously, use descriptive full word variable names, separate compound statements into easier to understand (and easier to insert stuff between) smaller ones and of course take advantage of perl's '-w' and 'use strict' features. and if you think something still isn't clear, then for pete's sake comment it! don't blame poor coding practices on the language itself. you can just as easily write nasty unreadable code in c.

  3. Re:I wish... by FortKnox · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Perl would kick Java's ass as a cross-platform app development language if it did

    Seems a bit trollish, but I'll bite. If I wanted to make a large maintainable and updatable cross-platform app, with lots of time I'd choose Java. If I needed a cross-platform app that needed to be up in little time, and was never gonna be changed, I might chose your PERL with GUI Abstraction.

    Honestly, though, I don't think it would "kick java's ass", its like compairing C and C++. Is one better than the other? Depends on how you use it!
    A quick and powerful scripting language versus a high level object oriented language?
    Apples and Oranges.

    Surprisingly, though, they appear to be competing. Parrot, perls next version, contains error handling similar to Java, and Java1.4 added regexp.

    --
    Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!