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I first met MacPerl (and, really, Perl) sometime in 1995, when I had a large data filtering and analysis problem to solve: take a big pile of data, squeeze out the useful parts, and perform some simple statistical analysis. I could have pulled the data out manually (once a week; I think not...). I could have shoved the data over to the Unix system and written some scripts to handle it (too much work). I could have learned Excel's macro language and done everything in spreadsheets (no; been there, done that, did not enjoy the trip). Perl was the only sensible choice. So I loaded up MacPerl and started coding. By the time I was done my script was 1000 lines long (and over the 32K TextEdit limit). I could add new statistics at a moment's notice. I had upgraded the script to be usable by more than just myself (and it was in use by several members of my department and other departments). And I was thoroughly hooked on Perl (and MacPerl). I've worked with the Mac for over 11 years, and I am a programmer, but I had never programmed my Mac. Now, with MacPerl, I can do nearly everything I would be able to do on my Unix system (and I have contextual syntax coloring in my text editor :-)
Vicki Brown |