Why Perl does not have good IDE's?

In today's world, Integrated Development Environment (IDE) is an integral part of programming. It empowers the developer to build the software application effectively and quickly. The essentials features of IDE are Syntax highlighting, Refactoring, debugging, Auto Code Completion, Terminal, version control and data structure browsing, which helps a developer quickly execute actions and maximize the productivity by providing the User Interface.

Most of the IDE in the today's world supports multiple languages and Perl is one of them.

Perl's and most popular IDE's are :

• Komodo Edit
• Atom
• Padre (Not in active development)
• VS Code
• Pycharm

All IDE's mentioned above are good in Syntax highlighting, having their Terminal and also provides the version control. But the auto code completion is missing from all the editors. And the reason is the TIMTOWTDI. Yes, you read it right. The boon for Perl is actually the bane for Perl, and hence here is no perfect IDE for Perl and I think this is the reason that new Programmers are not attracted towards Perl.

For example in Python3 to add two numbers using function is

def add_number(var1, var2):
    return var1 + var2


print(add_number(2, 3))

Whereas to do the same in Perl:

Method 1

use warnings;
use strict;

my $res = add_number(2, 3);

print "Result is : ", $res, " ";

sub add_number {
    my($num1, $num2) = @_ ;

    return $num1 + $num2;
}

Method 2

use warnings;
use strict;

my $res = add_number(2, 3);

print "Result is : ", $res, " ";

sub add_number {
    my $num1 = shift;
    my $num2 = shift;

    return $num1 + $num2;
}

Method 3

use warnings;
use strict;

my $res = add_number(2, 3);

print "Result is : ", $res, " ";

sub add_number {
   return $_[0] + $_[1] ;
}

Method 4

use warnings;
use strict;

my $res = add_number(2, 3);

print "Result is : ", $res, "";

sub add_number {
   # my ($num1, $num2) = (@_);

   return shift(@_) + shift (@_);
}

METHOD 5

Last but not the least

use warnings;
use strict;

my %dis = (  plus => sub { $_ [0] + $_[1] } );
my $res = $dis { plus } -> (2, 3);

print "Result is : ", $res, "\n";

Which one of the above is correct?

All of the above methods can be used to add two numbers in Perl. I am pretty sure that there are other methods to achieve the same result.

Anyways, imagine just to add two numbers, Perl has at least 5 ways to do it, and if we want to add all the shortcuts or code completion for Perl in an IDE it is practically impossible and if somehow it is possible then that particular IDE will be memory extensive which is kill to the system.

In short, I don't think in future it is possible to have the IDE in Perl. You might have editors (I like atom personally) but not the full-fledged IDE.

As a Perl lover, I wish I am wrong.

Comments

[Thomas H Jones II]

One could probably make an IDE that did what you needed, but, you have to have a sufficient critical-mass of users and would-be-users for it to be worth someone's or some group's time to do.

For better or worse, Perl isn't fashionable any more (hell, Perl isn't even installed by default on many OSes where it used to be).

Overall, it seems like "buzzy" languages are the ones to get IDEs ...probably to facilitate people being able to easily work in the language du jour.

[Ashutosh]

I think perl is not installed only on Windows I guess. It is core in Unix like Operating system. I agreed it is not as Popular as before.

[Thomas H Jones II]

It's been a while since it's been part of OSes or distributions' "core"/minimized package-groups. For example, it hasn't been core to Enterprise Linux since at least RHEL 5 (which is like a decade or so, now?). Been a similar time-span for Solaris and other commercial UNIX variants.

[Ashutosh]

Oh, It isn't a part of core RHEL ? I didn't knew that.
I use Ubuntu in one of the VPS and Perl version 5.26 is pre-installed in it or may be it is the service provider who installed it (I don't know).

[Thomas H Jones II]

Frequently, VPS service-providers do an other than "minimized" installation - mostly as a means of avoiding thousands of "<SOFTWARE> is missing" service requests.

[joss]

What about IDEA + Perl plugin

[Ashutosh]

I used it earlier but I didn't found it good enough. Now I am using VS Code along with the Tabnine Plugin. It is as close to what Pycharm is for Python.

[Reese Poirier]

Thanks for the Tabnine tip. I'm passing it along to my team.

[Rakshith Chengappa]

Method 6:

print &add_number(2,3);
sub add_number { return $[0] + $[1] ; }