http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=446567


in reply to Re: {Perl6} Macros and native compilation
in thread {Perl6} Macros and native compilation

What you say is correct, but it's not enough for some cases.

For example, at work we all have Windows machines and most people don't have Perl installed. From time to time, I create small Perl applications that could be useful for others, and it's a big problem to move them to other computers.

Even if Perl is installed, all the modules the program need often are not, and some computers are not connected to the network so it's not easy to distribute.

What I use is PAR, but it creates large executables (3 MB and north) and often induces a runtime penalty (even if it's only on startup - some apps are so small that a 20 second delay is unbearable)

Compiling Perl to native code would be a bliss for me. I'd wish to work in a networked Unix environment (like at my other job), with Perl installed everywhere and CPAN distribution simple, but sometimes reality hurts.

In fact this is the only downside of Perl for me, and the reason I still sometimes create pure-C++ (with Win32 API for GUI) apps - complete programs with GUIs that run autonomously on any Windows box disregarding of its application base and take only 100K of disk/memory are hard to beat.