Great to have Perl on iOS, but …
This app is charming, useful and it’s great to have a genuine Perl app for iOS.
But: it’s quirky, to say the least. Bugbears:
[ 1. ] Perl v. 5.22 is *pretty old*. The current version of Perl is v. 5.42. That’s 20 major (yes major) versions or 10-11 years newer. 5.42 has *a lot* of new stuff, bugfixes & improvements. More to the point, only the latest two major release versions (i.e. currently 5.40 and 5.42) are officially supported – and thus prioritised for *security fixes* – by the Perl Steering Council.
[ 2. ] I understand that the developer is probably not a native English speaker – or possibly is, but is just terrible at spelling. (You’re not alone.) The large number of typos / spelling errors give the app a homespun feel. This has a certain charm, but a less positive take might be that there’s a lack of quality control. It isn’t hard to get spell checker software for English – or just an English dictionary.
[ 3. ] Some of the directory links – such as for iCloud Drive – do not work.
[ 4. ] It’s great to have some of the documentation onboard – but the text seems to have been filtered rather clumsily to remove punctuation, leading to typos such as “Mark is very short tutorial on references” instead of “Mark’s”, and “ca not” instead of “can’t” (both in the onboard perlref file).
[ 5. ] The core Perl docs, such as perlref above, are also bundled as local HTML pages downloaded from perldoc.perl.org. This is helpful, but like most hackers I would prefer a text version (or better, natively marked up POD). The webpages are OK but not ideal for mobile. Also, after many years with the same UI, perldoc.perl.org has recently revamped its look & feel. Can we have the new pages please?
But still, it really is great to have a proper Perl app with the standard library, runnable code, etc. for those times when inspiration strikes and you want to whip up a script or run some tests whilst squashed into a bus at rush hour.
But: it’s quirky, to say the least. Bugbears:
[ 1. ] Perl v. 5.22 is *pretty old*. The current version of Perl is v. 5.42. That’s 20 major (yes major) versions or 10-11 years newer. 5.42 has *a lot* of new stuff, bugfixes & improvements. More to the point, only the latest two major release versions (i.e. currently 5.40 and 5.42) are officially supported – and thus prioritised for *security fixes* – by the Perl Steering Council.
[ 2. ] I understand that the developer is probably not a native English speaker – or possibly is, but is just terrible at spelling. (You’re not alone.) The large number of typos / spelling errors give the app a homespun feel. This has a certain charm, but a less positive take might be that there’s a lack of quality control. It isn’t hard to get spell checker software for English – or just an English dictionary.
[ 3. ] Some of the directory links – such as for iCloud Drive – do not work.
[ 4. ] It’s great to have some of the documentation onboard – but the text seems to have been filtered rather clumsily to remove punctuation, leading to typos such as “Mark is very short tutorial on references” instead of “Mark’s”, and “ca not” instead of “can’t” (both in the onboard perlref file).
[ 5. ] The core Perl docs, such as perlref above, are also bundled as local HTML pages downloaded from perldoc.perl.org. This is helpful, but like most hackers I would prefer a text version (or better, natively marked up POD). The webpages are OK but not ideal for mobile. Also, after many years with the same UI, perldoc.perl.org has recently revamped its look & feel. Can we have the new pages please?
But still, it really is great to have a proper Perl app with the standard library, runnable code, etc. for those times when inspiration strikes and you want to whip up a script or run some tests whilst squashed into a bus at rush hour.
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