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Re: wxPerl past, wxPerl present and wxPerl future.
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From:
Jim Clark
Date:
January 7, 2013 00:15
Subject:
Re: wxPerl past, wxPerl present and wxPerl future.
Message ID:
3AB3E769-9D42-4B8E-A82A-68EFD4587417@jimclark.net
First time post to this list (I think). I have been a big user at my company where I have developed several in house applications with wxPerl. I originally began using perlQt, but due to the serious bugs with the table widget, and the fact that Ashley Winters seems to have dropped off the face of the planet, I switched to WxPerl. But… due to internal foot-dragging in our IT dept, I am stuck with WxWidgets 2.8.10. It makes me sad to hear you say that WxPerl is dying, but for me and my department, it will likely have many more years left.
-----------------------
Jim Clark <><
jim@jimclark.net
408-781-1425
prepare yourselves...
On Jan 3, 2013, at 2:59 AM, Johan Vromans wrote:
> Steve Cookson <steveco.1959@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> ... an appeal on the community to keep wxPerl alive ...
>
> Every once in a while an appeal like this is made. Mark did it some time
> ago, I personally felt the need to write one 'one of these days' but
> Steve was faster this time.
>
> I was delighted to see 16 responses in a short term, however, most
> responses were about the wiki problems. Although this is a real pain
> (and we have a decent working wiki by now -- thanks to Huub) it
> distracts from the main issue: wxPerl is dying.
>
> wxPerl = GUI desktop programs
>
> wxPerl = wxWidgets + Perl
>
> wxWidgets is dying.
>
> Perl is dying.
>
> Now, don't start yelling that much effort is being put right now in
> wxWidgets and Perl. I know that. But we must ask ourselves: to what
> purpose?
>
> Perl seems to be moving to a framework for Web applications. When you
> carefully watch the current activities in the Perl community, it is all
> Catalyst, Mojolicious, Dancer. The only other significant activity is
> MetaCPAN, yet another attempt to bring order in CPAN where the C seems
> to stand for Chaotic. (I exclude perl6 activities since I consider perl6
> too immature to be useful for anything.) There's little to no interest
> in creating decent Perl programs. Have you ever wondered why there is
> only support for modules on CPAN, and no support for programs?
>
> wxWidgets seems to be moving, as Steve correctly metions, towards a
> desktop development system.
>
> So we see different directions for wxWidgets and Perl.
>
> We can ask ourselves: what do we want?
>
> For me, wxPerl is the means to develop mature, usefull, user friendly,
> cross-platform desktop applications in my favourite programming
> language.
>
> 25 years ago, when Perl was born, only a selective group of people,
> commonly called 'nerds', could use computers. Nowadays everybody uses
> computers. And due to the influence of Windows and Mac, almost everybody
> is used to serious, mature, usefull, user friendly desktop applications
> like Excel, Word, Powerpoint, Firefox, Photoshop and so on.
>
> With wxPerl we can write applications like these. Moreover, due to the
> cross-platform features, these applications can be deployed on the most
> popular desktop platforms: Windows, MacOSX and Linux.
>
> It is at this point that I want to give tons of kudo's to Mark Dootson
> for creating and maintaining CitrusPerl and CavaPackager.
>
> But why do I say "wxPerl is dying"?
>
> Writing mature, usefull, user friendly, cross-platform desktop
> applications if a complicated task. Photoshop wasn't developed
> overnight, in fact, most of the examples I mentioned took 10 years or
> more to become what they are today. So it is not surprising that there
> are few wxPerl applications in this collection. See e.g.
> http://wiki.wxperl.nl/w/index.php/List_of_wxPerl_desktop_applications
>
> But times are changing. We now have iDevices and Android phones and
> tablets, and millions and millions of users of apps, small applications
> that are usually up to a single task, and try to do that in a clever and
> intuitive way. These are the applications of the future. Since they're
> small and clever, wxPerl would be an excellent tool to develop
> applications like these -- Perl has always had a good reputation for
> small and nifty programs. For every team of Perl developers working on
> desktop applications there are thousands of Perl developers wanting to
> develop apps.
>
> Except they can't.
>
> There's no Perl on iOS. There's no Perl on Android. Not visibly. There's
> no wxWidgets on iOS nor Android. And although these platforms have been
> around for several years, there are no concrete plans to provide
> wxWidgets on these platforms. (Note that I use the word "provide", not
> "port".) Considering the traditional cross-platform nature of wxWidgets,
> it could be the first development tool to produce apps for both iOS and
> Android. It would be a real killer.
>
> But, as it stands now, despite of all the effort put in the current
> wxWidgets development, I think wxWidgets is a dead end. And so is
> wxPerl.
>
> Oh yes, there will be people developing using wxWidgets and Perl, but
> there'll be only few. The threshold is way too high.
>
> What can *you* do?
>
> Just prove that I'm wrong.
>
> We can at least lower the threshold by making it attractive to develop
> small desktop programs that do something sensible and look nice. I still
> consider wxGlade --yet another dead end-- a good tool to start wxPerl
> development. The wiki is functional again. Let's create examples.
> Tutorials.
>
> Happy hacking!
>
> -- Johan
> http://johan.vromans.org/seasons_greetings.html
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