Actually, red, I gotta disagree with you. I feel, and I know many others do as well, that UNIX is NOT a good development platform.

I disagree with you.

powerful Command Line Interface

Unix != CLI. The Unix (and really I'm talking about all the Unix spinoffs and clones here) philosophy has to do with operating system structure, and nothing to do with GUI vs CLI.

I run Linux, running X windows, and Keep 10-12 xterm (CLI) windows open. The GUI allows this. This is not different than Windows or Macintosh in any way. However I have more tools (Thanks to GNU) available, I have compilers available (Does Windows ship with a C compiler?), etc. ActiveState has to do a fair amount of work for their Windows version of Perl, whereas the conversion to BSD or Linux or other Unix-like systems is far easier.

Windows and Mac restrict access and reduce flexibility. That is why they are a poor development environment, and why Perl stays "in it's cradle".

The reason the GUI was considered such a huge advance is because it WAS.

Absolutely. And it was a huge advance YEARS before Windows was ever thought of. But it isn't a replacement, it's an extension. Some tasks are very difficult to do in a CLI, while others are very difficult to do in a GUI.

Perl is a tool. Perl is flexible. It is and should be system independant.