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Perl programming

Perl is a programming language used for over 25 years in many of the software development projects done by John Bokma. Its excellent data processing capabilities and outstanding libraries available as Perl modules via the CPAN result in rapid development of dedicated tools written in Perl.

Perl, John's first choice

Perl also is often John's first language of choice for prototyping if no graphical user interface is required. In most cases the speed of the Perl programming language is more than sufficient to handle the tasks and a final implementation in a compiled programming language is not needed.

Object Oriented Programming and code reuse

For most programming work, OOP is used to create robust solutions. Since reinventing the wheel is not John's business, Perl modules from the CPAN are used where possible in his solutions that use the Perl programming language.

CGI scripts

John Bokma has performed the following tasks on CGI scripts written in the Perl programming language:

  • security audits
  • speed up by using improved code (less server load)
  • increased readability
  • added extensive documentation
  • modified to requirements of customer
  • replaced code with usage of libraries
  • improved overall quality of the code
  • interfacing with databases, like MySQL, using DBI

Perl applications

Besides CGI solutions, Perl has been used to create many other custom made programs like system administration tools, office automation, text analysing tools, document generation etc.

Some of those Perl programs use either wxWindows (wxWidgets) using the wxPerl extension module to provide the user with a GUI.

John has also experience with Perl application deployment using the PAR. With PAR is it also possible to combine the perl executable, the Perl script(s), and all required Perl modules in one stand alone executable.

Cross platform Perl solutions

Because John Bokma uses a wide range of operating systems running Perl, there is quite some experience with creating cross platform solutions.