I've checked out the solutionsoft IDE and it looks like a nice tool, though I think for the average programmer, $149 is a bit steep for what it does. Many of us who use Perl are open-source and GNU oriented and prefer tools that reflect that philosophy. The main selling point that I see is that solutionsoft does not appear to be Microsoft-related. This is a Good Thing.

As for myself, I enjoy a good IDE, but have mostly valued them for their debugging capability. Perl has a great command line debugger and a free GUI debugger is being developed. It has a ways to go, but it's a great tool.

A free Perl IDE called CodeMagic has been a useful tool for me and the author is VERY anti-Microsoft and doesn't care for ActiveState Perl. The IDE is a tad buggy and I could never get the debugger to work properly, but it's saved me a bit of time. (Note: As of this posting, the CodeMagic site was down).

For those of us who enjoy IDEs, I think we'll have to be patient. Still, I'm glad to see that others are working on this (I don't have the skill to do so).

For those curious to know my REAL views about Microsoft, check out this link.

Cheers!

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