The Perl Journal November, 2003
Let's face it. Most of the time, as Perl developers, we shun GUIs. For the majority of Perl work, we just don't want to bother with it. One reason is that the old 80/20 rule seems to apply here—the interface represents 20 percent of a program's functionality, yet takes 80 percent of the development effort. And, of course, there are entire realms of Perl programming where a GUI is not just undesirable, it's downright nonsensical.
But it's also true that the lack of an easy way to provide such an interface can get you in a rut. If there's no easy way to do it in Perl, it's tempting to turn to Python or Java (well, tempting for some of us). This is a surefire way to marginalize Perl, relegating it to an endless series of CGI scripts and other back-end tasks.
Thankfully, we do have ways of adding some interface-widget goodness to our Perl creations. In the first installment of a two-part article on Gtk2-Perl, Gavin Brown shares a set of bindings for the Gtk+ 2.x libraries. With it, you can use object-oriented Perl to write event-loop-based Gtk and Gnome apps. Maybe it will even inspire you to try your hand at coding a slightly richer interface for your Perl apps.
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Also in this issue, you'll find an article by Thomas Plum detailing the results of a study he and his colleagues did of software job offers for the 12 months beginning July 2002, analyzing the job offers by programming-language requirements. Roughly half the offers during that time period make mention of C++, while a little over 40 percent make mention of Java. C, of course, makes a strong showing, as does Visual Basic.
Perl's numbers come in around the 12-percent mark and to me, this is where it gets interesting. Is it possible that only 12 percent of software jobs involve significant amounts of Perl coding? I doubt it. I bet the real number is much higher, and that Perl is just exhibiting its accustomed stealthy ubiquity. Here's the number I really want to know: What percentage of job offers make absolutely no mention of Perl, yet result in jobs (such as sys admins) that ultimately require a great deal of Perl coding to get work done in the real world? Maybe someday we'll have an answer to that question.
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At the end of September, UK-based antispam company Sophos inspired a collective sharp intake of breath among Windows Perl developers when it announced it had acquired ActiveState. For Perl coders trying to deliver the goods in a Microsoft-dominated desktop market, ActiveState was a rock, providing solid tools and building a loyal user base. Basically, ActiveState is Perl in the Windows world.
We've all seen acquisitions go sour. Sometimes the buyer only wants one piece of the pie, and the rest gets discarded. Or sometimes the buyer fails utterly to understand the acquired company's market or products. But from all accounts, that's not happening with Sophos and ActiveState. If the statements from both companies and the chatter on ActiveState's mailing lists are to be believed, nothing really will change. Sophos has expressed a commitment to all of ActiveState's current product lines, and is retaining all of ActiveState's staff. Here's hoping that the lovefest continues.
Kevin Carlson
Executive Editor
The Perl Journal