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my perl haiku

mdxi on 2004-01-25T18:44:51

Here's my perl haiku contest entry:

i hate activestate
weird proprietary shit
funhouse mirror perl


**Disclaimer** I don't use Windows, so my impressions of activestate's products are filtered through friends who do have to use them and posters on perlmonks. Still, I believe them to be accurate.

ActiveState Does More Than Just Windows

Mr. Muskrat on 2004-01-26T02:46:35

They have products (not just Perl) for Windows, Linux and Solaris.

WTF?

grantm on 2004-01-26T18:17:45

ActiveState pay talented people to work on Open Source software, they build and package that software for a number of platforms, they make it available for free (anonymous) download from their web site and they host a large number of mailing lists where people can get free support for their products as well as mailing lists not directly related to their products. That all costs a significant amount of money and yet they do it for free. What's to hate about that?

ActiveState also have developed a number of software products which they have chosen not to release under an open source license (as is their right). As far as I'm aware all these products are available for free download and evaluation. If you were to try one and not like it then I imagine you would simply not buy it. What's to hate about that?

Re:WTF?

mdxi on 2004-01-29T03:42:40

Look. I don't doubt that they give back to the community, etc., etc. In fact, I so don't doubt it that I never said anything about it at all.

All I said was that ActiveState Perl on Windows am like bizarro Perl on Unix. Maybe this isn't even their fault; maybe it's just what happens when you have to touch Windows; I'll never know.

But I reserve the right to be seriously turned off by it and write flamey haiku about it.

Ok, so maybe I overreacted ...

grantm on 2004-01-29T08:16:53

... but I'm a Unix guy who's done a lot of work on Windows with ActiveState Perl and I have not been plagued by 'bizarro' behaviour. In fact the main surprise I've had is how amazingly consistent things are despite the different underlying OS.

I have heard that there are some surprises lurking in the fork emulation but I haven't struck them. Apart from that it's just like Perl on any other platform as far as I can see.

haiku is bad

podmaster on 2004-04-02T10:01:11

three short lines
      secondhand bull and lies
                  haiku is bad

I think it unwise to bash things
you haven't tried out.
I use perl on windows
(activeperl and activeperl flavored)
all the time and I got no
problems or complaints

                  ActivePerl runs
      Go 'n' Get It, It runs good
                  ActivePerls fun