Write Aqua Applications in Perl [camelbones.sourceforge.net]

Don't let the wacky name or often flakey website fool you—CamelBones is a very serious piece of software.

In a nutshell, it allows you to interface Perl and Objective C libraries (in both directions).

What gets me excited is the ability to write fully fledged Aqua applications in Perl, using all the gui goodness of Xcode. You can effortlessly link buttons to perl methods in Apple's Interface Builder (CamelBones uses Perl OO constructs to do it's business in the developers space).

Immediate obvious uses are writing custom corporate database applications connecting to any perl supported backend database via native connectivity, SOAP etc. I could write a simple proof of concept application in under an hour!

In fact I wrote a simple XML-RPC based Aqua front end in AppleScript a few years ago—today I would do it in perl.

I looked at CamelBones a few years ago (from memory) and it wasn't really ready for prime time. With the current release being 0.2.3 it is clearly not promising to be complete, but with it's (new) threads support it seems plenty for my purposes.

Combining Perl with the Apple/NextStep libraries = Rapid development x 2 :)