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Re^2: Perl and open source
by BUU (Prior) on Nov 13, 2004 at 20:20 UTC
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3. Perl is weaker in certain key areas. For example, Perl is much less strong in GUI comparing with java or Microsoft products, and strong GUI support is such a high criteria in many projects. It made Perl less likely to be able to penetrate this area seriously. On the other hand, the question would be whether Perl actually seriously targeting certain application areas.
What exactly do languages like C and Java offer in the way of GUIs that perl doesn't? Considering C, I can use almost exactly the same tool kits from C as I can from perl (not suprising really..), such as wx, gtk, tk, etc. I have no real idea what java uses for GUIs these days, but what features do they offer that perl's libraries (and by extension, C's libraries) don't have?
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That's not the way I look at it. GUI is much less about which libraries you have, but more about how quick and easily I can build my user interface with those libraries, and about what tools are available, and how easy it is to use those tools. Today, if someone wants to build a building brick by brick, he still can, but is that a good choice?
"like C and Java offer in the way of GUIs that perl doesn't?"
I said something different with careful consideration. What I said was "java and microsoft products".
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So basically the issue isn't the "base functionality" of any of the systems involved, but the wyiwyg tools to develop interfaces for you?
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Tradition. Since a lot of OSs and user environments are written in C, a widget set in C would make sense. I.e. XWindows and what not. For java, that was backed by Sun from the get-go. Have strong OOP, graphical stuff, networking and so on. C++, I can only think of the MFC and qt off of the top of my head. The only toolkits for C++ i can think of are people who wish to make a profit on peple who want a graphical interface written in C++ instead of just wrapped. C++, I *think* has more biz people interested, as OOP is usually good for representing biz like ideas in an organized way. Companies like "organization". Perl had it tacked on later, no?
So java is company backed.
C++ is profit backed.
C is done sort of as a default.
perl has tk and all of the C bindings sorta, but I think it falls more in line with python and ruby. They aren't native languages so to speak. They are open and not profit backed.. well.. didn't nasa sponsor it in some way when mr wall was witht hem? Anyway, I dont' know of many OSs written in perl. And whhomever sponsors perl doesn't seem to have that huge of an interest in graphical interfaecs. Not bad.. just true.. I think.
Am i at all accurate on any of this?
----
Then B.I. said, "Hov' remind yourself
nobody built like you, you designed yourself"
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"perl... but I think it falls more in line with python and ruby."
Your assertion is so true. Perl and Java actually fall in two different categories in real life, and they are like apple and orange. Java was never targeted to compete with Perl, and I don't think Larry Wall's target was or is to compete with Java, or even create a language for a close purpose.
One of my co-worker created a suite we used to build our system from cvs, and deploy it to testing and production environments, that was a good fit for Perl. Nobody in the team ever questioned whether we should build that suite in Java.
In my real life, I never had a situation where people argured about whether we should do so and so in Java or Perl, but there are times they discuss whether something should be done in .Net or Java. This shows that, there is usually(I added this word after read sporty's reply) a clear cut between Perl and things like Java and .Net. They are just created for different application areas.
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Re^2: Perl and open source
by monoxide (Beadle) on Nov 17, 2004 at 03:12 UTC
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3. Perl is weaker in certain key areas. For example, Perl is much less strong in GUI comparing with java or Microsoft products, and strong GUI support is such a high criteria in many projects. It made Perl less likely to be able to penetrate this area seriously. On the other hand, the question would be whether Perl actually seriously targeting certain application areas.
I dont tend to agree with this statement. It is just as easy to create a GUI (on windows anyway) using Win32::API as it is in C, where you must use native API calls also to get a GUI. While this requires a fair bit of work (and probably a bit of research) it is not all that hard, if a little repetitive.
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