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Where's the "IronPerl" Project?
pondlife writes "A friend asked me today about using some Microsoft server components from Perl. Over the years he's built up a large collection of Perl/COM code using Win32::OLE and he had planned on doing the same thing here. The big problem is that as with many current MS APIs, they're available for .NET only because COM is effectively deprecated at this point. I did some Googling, expecting to find quickly the Perl equivalent of IronPython or IronRuby. But to my surprise I found almost nothing. ActiveState has PerlNET, but there's almost no information about it, and the mailing list 'activity' suggests it's dead or dying anyway. So, what are Perl/Windows shops doing now that more and more Microsoft components are .NET? Are people moving to other languages for Windows administration? Are they writing wrappers using COM interop? Or have I completely missed something out there that solves this problem?"
Actually, I remember reading somewhere that Microsoft uses build system written in Perl to compile Windows. Ironic, isn't it?
Unfortunately, (as perl fan), Perl6 is the problem. All the bright young things went into the death march that is Perl6 and CPAN stopped getting useful additions. Two burnout cycles later, we still don't have Perl6. Or modern, complete XML/Xpath support. Or a DBI::CSV which can do joins. Or any other number of actually useful code bits.
I'm now tossing up whether to learn Ruby or Python.
My linux box doesn't have ruby or python installed, and I haven't had any problems. Try deleting perl from yours!
What distribution are you running? Every distribution I've used had Python installed by default for years (and would break terribly if you tried to remove it).
I have been in similar shoes some time ago.
I wouldn't elaborate on the all boring details, but just shortly summarize my experience.
If you can Perl, then you better off porting your stuff to Linux. Perl on Windows sounds cool and ActiveState does excellent job. But Perl would always remain underdog, restrained by the fact that its foreign platform - platform where VB rules.
I know I sound impractical, but after two years trying to make some stuff fly reliably on Windows with CygWin and ActiveState, I simply given up. I given up on Windows mostly because I found that all stuff I need, on Linux is very similar and (most importantly) there are no all those stupid CygWin and OLE/ActiveX annoyances and periodic breakages. For my application, near doubled performances was only an extra bonus.
If you plan to remain on Windows, you have to accept and start doing it in VB or C# or whatever is language du jour in Redmond.
If you depend on Perl, then thinking in direction of *nix platform is sound choice. (Or even some VMware or VBox setup with Linux guest.)
P.S. My work was related to processing of .xls files with huge amount of statistical data and making some charts for them. On Linux that was solved beautifully with (1) telling people to export info as CSV (extra bonus: smaller files) and (2) gnuplot output charts to PDF. Frankly, in the end it worked magnitudes better than the setup with ActiveState Perl/Excel/WinWord/etc on Windows.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
Oh and lets not forget how "cool" it'd be if the runtime of every pet scripting language was embedded directly in common web browsers. Yes Cletus, that sure would be 'great'!
My word. You've just described Silverlight.
Reality is the ultimate Rorschach.
As a former heavy user of Perl (and now a light user), let me encourage you that you're unlikely to go wrong either way. Both are popular, well-supported dynamic languages with bright futures.
Python is less Perlish than Ruby in syntax, but in the end I found that rather charming and made it my "new" dynamic language. I have no regrets.
Besides, if I want to shred and rebuild a text file in 40 characters of line noise (please understand that I mean that fondly - I like Perl's conciseness), then I've still got Perl 5. Python does many other things well, so I consider them both useful tools to know.
So quit tossing up (ahem), pick one, and get on with it! :-)
> Based on what I gather in my country the use of Perl is actually in decline
.NET environment for ideological reasons ("managed code" blah blah blah) or in order to attract programmers and/or managers who have bought into the whole .NET thing, but for Perl the only real reason to run perl in the .NET environment, as opposed to the normal way of doing things, would be if it provided some concrete practical advantages; I'm not aware of any. I'm not saying .NET wouldn't provide an advantage for *some* languages. C/C++, for instance, were in dire need of some of the things that .NET can provide, not least higher-level variable types that automatically take care of things like reallocating more space when needed. But for Perl, as far as I'm aware, the .NET environment is a solution in search of a problem.
.NET environment doesn't mean there aren't modules on the CPAN for interfacing with .NET code. Perl is, after all, a major glue language, so it's accustomed to interfacing with code that runs in different environments. There are probably at least three different approaches to it, with different strengths and weaknesses for different situation. I don't happen to know what they are, because I've never had any reason to work with .NET, but I if I wanted to know, I sure wouldn't ask on slashdot and sift through thousands of irrelevant posts in hopes of finding the answer. I'd go straight to a (gasp) Perl forum (e.g., Perlmonks) or a Perl mailing list, someplace with an SNR above 1.
Perhaps. But Perl is so widely used, it could decline steadily for forty years and still be more important than C#.
I think a larger factor is that Perl is not usually given to a strong emphasis on presentation, brand names, buzzwords, and such. Perl is a very *practical* language, grounded in the idea of getting things done, and getting them done quickly, conveniently, and efficiently.
Some languages would want to run in the
Also, just because there's no "IronPerl Project" running around enthusiastically talking about the importance of running Perl in a
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.