Matisse,
Will Perl 6 help us have tools that are as good or better than the ones available for Java, C#, etc?
I've been using Perl since 1994 and for the past several years have used it to build a number of complex mod_perl applications. I love Perl.
The following may be considered heresy, but I believe that these days the quality of the whole development environment is just as important, maybe *more* important than the language itself. I mean that the availability of *easily integrated* tools including IDE, automated testing tools, refactoring, deployment tools, etc. are a HUGE factor in determining what language gets used for a large project
Heresy or not, I think you are (mostly) right. Actually I would say your are right *unfortunately*.
Available tools are a huge factor, yes - not in a way as which language to select for a project, but which one to *deselect*. And currently Perl (I mean Perl5) is not doing very well compared to others.
I've become scared that if Perl is to continue to be viable for large, complex, multi-developer projects that the tools need to serious catch-up with what is available for Java, for example. Things like:
- Refactoring Support (see http://www.refactoring.com/) - CVS and/or Subversion integration - Support for integrating regression tests and auto-building - Automated syntax and dependency checking
IMHO subversioning does not have too much to do with the language itself. Subversioning operates on files. An IDE might integrate some interface for this task, but that is a different question.
Syntax checking in general is very hard to do in Perl5/6 because of the great amount of line noise there (consider yourself in the middle of writing a regexp :)) The perl6 compiler must be able to do syntax checking, though :-), and the design of Perl6, as I understand, definetely gives you more possibilities compared to Perl5.
For the others, some more knowledgeable folks will probably provide some answers and ideas. However, I think that the language design and implementation does not have too much to do with IDE availability.
I've been using Eclipse, with the EPIC plugin (http://e-p-i-c.sourceforge.net/) and so far I like it. It uses Devel::Refactor to support "extract subroutine", but a lot more is needed to match what you can do with Java these days.
What are others' thoughts on this?
Have you considered using the "DONATE" button on http://e-p-i-c.sourceforge.net/ ? :)))
- Fagzal
