On 24 Feb 2011, at 18:02, Bruce Johnson wrote:
On Feb 19, 2011, at 6:23 AM, Gerald Cornish wrote:
Hi Guys here's the situation...
I've downloaded & installed ActivePerl, ActivePython, ActiveTCL.
Now, as an ex mainframe programmer (Cobol, Fortran, S3, etc) I am
out of my comfort zone - big time.
Having done the install I see no programs in Applications folder
so I guess this is a Terminal job.
I would like to try my hand at these options, nothing big just
small useful utilities for my own and the family's benefit.
Where do I start? How do I get to see a place to input code? Is
there a good link to explain the structure of these languages and
how to use them?
Why these particular versions? Both Python and Perl come pre-
installed in OS X (they're important tools for the OS a lot of
Apple's own stuff is written in perl and python), and ActiveState's
stuff is non-standard in many, many ways (it's mainly used for
Windows deployments). With lots of third party stuff (like the
gazillions of perl add-ins at Cpan.org) you'll constantly get
questions form folkls about 'I have active state, this particular
thing doesn't work')
Yes the stuff is done via terminal; I write a lot of perl on the
job. I use BBEdit as my programming editor, then just run the
scripts via terminal. You can also use TextWrangler.
Here's a GUI IDE for perl: <http://padre.perlide.org/>
Apple recommends Eclipse <http://developer.apple.com/tools/
eclipse.html>
Here's a bunch for Python: <http://wiki.python.org/moin/PythonEditors>
As for good tutorials there's tons.
I like Dive Into Python <http://diveintopython.org/> which has some
other tutorial links there.
For Perl there's always the Camel (Programming Perl) and the Llama
(Learning Perl) <http://oreilly.com/perl/> (Oreilly's programming
books all have various woodcut animals on the cover, and the Camel
is a well known one)
I like Perl more but that's sheerly out of laziness, it's the one I
use the most anymore and has become my primary programming language.
Bruce, thanks for all that info and for putting me on the right track
- I had no idea Perl & Python already existed on my Pismo.
I'll check out the links you provided first and then delve into the
versions already here.
Your comments are very helpful and have put me on what is likely to
be a better route than the one I had found.
I had figured Perl was what I probably wanted anyway to start with so
your notes about Perl are especially useful.
I've just started a download of Eclipse ready for tutorial working
tomorrow.
Regards
Gerald
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