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Padre Developers

Padre developers. Why do they spend time writing an editor for Perl?

Getting involved

We have a separate page about getting involved in the development of Padre.

About Padre Developers

Padre is for the developers, especially people writing Perl 5 or Perl 6 code.

Padre is also by the developers. It would not exists without all the people who spent their free time in developing Padre. This includes all the people: those who write code or report bugs, translate the GUI or package Padre for the various distributions.

In commercial products we are used to read testimonials of customers. Here let us show the testimonials of the developers involved in creating Padre.

Let this page stand for both as a thank you note to all the people involved in the creation of Padre and a place where they can tell you about the secret reasons they are involved in the project.

There are over 40 contributors in the Padre project. This page is maintained by the developers themselves so you will see only people who added themselves to this page.

If you would like to get involved, please follow the instructions on that page.

The full list of developers can be found in the source code of Padre.

  • Adam Kennedy

    Why are you involved in Padre?

    10 years as an Ultraedit user have seen me go from enthusiast, to ordinary user, to (attempted) contributor, to disgruntled user. It's a great text editor, but for Perl developers the situation never improves. Despite years of bug reporting and attempts to make my own situation better, flaws that existed a decade ago continue to annoy me regularly.
    Over the last few years years, I've known that all the elements of a good CPAN-hosted IDE were in place (Wx, Scintilla, PPI) and tried to encourage someone to build one (because I didn't have the time to lead it).
    By the time Gábor took the initiative and started Padre, I was more than ready to leave Ultraedit and move to an editor that I actually have some control over.
    The sense of empowerment you get from being able to fix your own editor is the ultimate feature.

    What are you hacking on?

    I follow behind all the creative feature-production people doing destructive refactoring and generally breaking everything. I'm responsible for the configuration, locale, database, search, and document subsystems.


  • developer avatar

    Ahmad M. Zawawi

    I am a full-time Java programmer who enjoys playing with Perl in the free time. I like the creative freedom, challenges and valuable experience that open source projects provide to programmers out there for FREE!

    Why are you involved in Padre?

    I was working on a Perl 6 syntax highlighter when I heard about Gábor's TPF Perl 6 Grant. Naturally, I offered to help out and now I am the co-maintainer of Padre::Plugin::Perl6 with him. My goal is to co-develop a state-of-the-art Perl 6 IDE.

    What are you hacking on?

    I am re-writing Syntax::Highlight::Perl6 to provide better PPI-like API. Afterwards, we can provide better Perl 6 refactoring support. I also wrote Padre::Plugin::Ecliptic to support my ambitious goal of porting useful Eclipse features into Padre.


  • developer avatar

    Brian Cassidy

    Why are you involved in Padre?

    I've always wanted an editor with deep Perl integration. This project also satisfies my curiosity for cross-platform GUI apps.

    What are you hacking on?

    I've taken the lead in making sure the PerlTidy plug-in follows all of the new developments in the Padre-sphere. Next on the docket, a settings dialog to customize your PerlTidy settings.


  • Kevin Dawson

    I am primarily a dyslexic technologist, with a history in e-mail and biometrics among other things, who just likes to ferret around until I find what I am looking for, then latch on like a Jack Russell, until it works or I understand why not.

    Why are you involved in Padre?

    Perl is just something I liked along the way, just as Open Source is.

    So I thought it was time to give something back, so here I am.

    What are you hacking on?

    It all started with a wiki page, thanks Gábor, put my own trac up so that I could hack around, and just started to update pages documenting how Padre worked as I went along, creating tickets in my wake.

    Then I had this bright idea, or not, which turned into Padre::Plugin::Cookbook out of which came Patch, it started as a Plugin.

    My current focus is with Debug2 and it's dependency Debug::Client and the current bleadperl anomalies.


  • developer avatar

    Burak Gürsoy

    Using Perl since 2001 and uploading to CPAN since 2003. I participate in Perl community sites and some Perl projects. Also trying to build a career on Perl.

    Why are you involved in Padre?

    Having an IDE written in Perl is something you can't help participating. It is possible to extend and fix errors using the language I like the most.


  • Claudio Ramirez

    I am a historian/linguist/UNIX admin/programmer/dad with not enough time but who loves Perl.

    Why are you involved in Padre?

    Blame the friendly people on IRC (#padre)! In fact I was tired of the "Perl is dead" FUD and Padre is a very positive answer to it. I like the idea of an IDE written in the same language that it targets so I can fix my own bugs. At the same time, I learn a lot from great Perl hackers working on the project. FOSS software has given me so much (my profession and hobby), so for me this is a very small payback.

    What are you hacking on?

    Nothing big. My speciality is just using Padre and suggesting new features that we need :). Once on a while I implement one of these small features myself like the "Toggle Comment" feature. Because I am one of those crazy people combining a day job in IT with a PhD on a unrelated field (Linguistics and Literature) and having small kids at the same time, I don't have a lot of time. Nevertheless, I try to do svn commit from time to time.


  • developer avatar

    Fayland Lam

    I am a Perl web programmer with Catalyst/DBIx::Class/TT2/Moose and Padre.

    Why are you involved in Padre?

    I really feel using an IDE written by Perl is very cool. I can write whatever I want with my favorite language, that's why I love Perl and Padre!

    What are you hacking on?

    I'm maintaining several Padre plug-ins and the zh_CN translation.


  • Breno G. de Oliveira

    Why are you involved in Padre?

    Even though I'm a "vi/vim" kind of guy for as long as I can remember, the idea of having an actual free and open-source Integrated Development Environment for Perl always tempted my imagination, specially when I see what such tool can do for beginners. So, when Gábor started Padre, I felt naturally attracted to the project. I first started translating Padre to pt_BR, and next thing I know I'm fixing bugs and committing new features.

    These guys here are just too nice, it's all their fault.

    What are you hacking on?

    I maintain the Brazilian Portuguese translation, and fix some bugs when I find them. Right now I'm looking into toolbar customization and better ways to use wxPerl for the project. I also created and maintain the Catalyst and Mojolicious plug-ins for Padre.


  • Jérôme Quelin

    is enjoying programming Perl

    Why are you involved in Padre?

    I've been long using vi, then Emacs, then vi again. I always wanted a Perl IDE designed around Perl programming – and not added as an afterthought. Padre has a huge potential with respect to this expectation. Being programmed in Perl allows me to fix what i dislike in it…

    What are you hacking on?

    When I'm working on Padre (which happens in bursts), I'm touching a lot of different parts of the code base: the plug-in manager and the sessions are my fault, so is the i18n plug-in API. I'm fixing stuff that annoys me, try to sanitize fishy stuff (removing circular dependencies, etc.) and document things that I'm forced to dig into… generally, I'm checking the bug tracker on a regular basis and try to pick and close random bugs. I also contributed a few plug-ins, and maintain Padre's French translation.


  • Marcela Mašláňová

    Why are you involved in Padre?

    It sounds interesting to see an IDE written in Perl. Also Gábor persuaded me into packaging and translating.


  • Ryan Niebur

    I am primarily an Emacs user because I mostly program/edit things that are not written in Perl, but I like being spoiled by the cool toys in Padre. ;)

    Why are you involved in Padre?

    I kind of just started.. :). Anyway, I enjoy contributing because the community is nice, puts up with me and my lack of knowledge about CPAN and Wx, and I'm learning new things.

    What are you hacking on?

    So far I have created Locale-Msgfmt to handle compiling translations for Padre and the plug-ins, and I wrote the REPL plug-in. I am also working on packaging the plug-ins for Debian (and Ubuntu), and am a co-maintainer of Padre in Debian.


  • Sebastian Willing

    developing since 1988 and using Perl since 1995

    Why are you involved in Padre?

    I was looking for a graphical editor or IDE for developing Perl during summer holidays 2009. Padre satisfied nearly all of my requirements, it was much faster than some other and I loved the idea to be able to change the source as needed but I didn't plan to really join the developer team due to time issues.

    I went to IRC to report a small bug and Gábor made me walking through the code fixing it myself but he finally trapped me by rejecting the Trac upload and making me commit it myself.

    What are you hacking on?

    Some smaller changes, fighting tickets and bugs and trying to convert IRC visitors into Padre developers.


  • developer avatar

    Andrew Bramble

    is still exercising the liberty to not run a homepage, twitter, blog etc.

    Why are you involved in Padre?

    Stunned at what had already been achieved with Padre 0.2, I felt it deserved the momentum. I am compelled to make the Pod/doc browser work respectably, which has turned into a serious yak shaving experience. I seem to yell, shout or otherwise vent anger at software – a lot. Channelling that rage into code is far more productive.

    What are you hacking on?

    Padre::DocBrowser and its guts, the replacement of PodFrame. Lots of differing ways to search and index data, KinoSearch is looking very promising and in Perl terms PPI and Pod-Abstract are my new best friends. Currently bit bashing and string mashing an index of this just for fun.

    Playing in the Padre::Swarm sandpit – mainly for fun.


  • developer avatar

    Gábor Szabó

    has been using Perl since 1995 and teaching it since 2000. He has been involved in the Perl community since 2001 organizing local Perl Monger meetings and conferences. Gábor is providing Perl development and training services bot in in-house automation and test automation.

    Why are you involved in Padre?

    I started the development of Padre as I wanted to create an editor for people who don't know Perl yet and for people who use Perl only as an add-on tool and thus even after several years of usage are not very familiar with the language, its special cases and CPAN.

    I knew I cannot do that alone so I decided to try to make it interesting enough for hard-core Perl developers to give it a try, to use it at least in some special cases or to manage large projects and to help in the development.

    I also hope Padre can be a springboard to learn Perl 6.

    I used to use vim and gvim both on Linux and Windows but since the first release of Padre I have been using it almost exclusively.

    What are you hacking on?

    Everything a bit but mostly I am trying to get more people involved.


  • Aaron 'TEEJAY' Trevena

    Why are you involved in Padre?

    I've been using Emacs since the mid-90s (although I'm no expert) and have never been able to find anything else I can work happily with, but Emacs Lisp makes my brain hurt, and cperl-mode struggles with the increasingly large and complex Perl applications I've been building recently - I'm looking for an alternative.
    Because Padre is easily extensible in a language I speak almost natively (Perl), and because it's lighter and faster than most of the other GUI editors I've tried, it's not only my best hope of replacing Emacs, but also fun and immediately rewarding to hack on both the editor itself and plug-ins.

    Although I don't use Padre for day-to-day development, I will be soon - once I'm happy with version control integration and Emacs key mapping, I'll be switching to it full time (which is 7.5 hours a day, 340 days a year).

    What are you hacking on?

    I've done some small mods to Padre itself to enable further work on key mapping in plug-ins, I'm working on the EmacsMode plug-in that provides Emacs style key mapping, and plan on integrating Autodia through another plug-in some time soon.


  • developer avatar

    Cezary Morga

    ... is a UNIX system administrator using Perl for fun and profit.

    Why are you involved in Padre?

    Because I'm bored with constant quarrels how Perl belongs to the past and that it don't even have an IDE. I think supplying the IDE written in Perl itself is appropriate answer for such accusations.

    As for how I got involved, Gábor made me :) He gave me a commit bit!

    What are you hacking on?

    I'm writing small pieces of code here and there, like in Run or Find/Replace parts. Apart from that, I'm maintaining Padre port for FreeBSD.


  • Steffen Müller

    doesn't think he's all that interesting. If you must know, he's a physicist who enjoys writing non-physics software in his spare time.

    Why are you involved in Padre?

    I'm the maintainer of the PAR suite of modules. Originally, I wanted to use the opportunity of a new application to create a PAR-based plug-in system. Then I had a drink with Gábor at YAPC::EU 2009 in Copenhagen. That's where it went downhill...

    More seriously, I simply enjoy being able to modify and customize the tools I use to get work done.

    What are you hacking on?

    I designed the concurrency system around Padre::Task, put together the PAR support for plug-ins, and wrote most of the Perl-specific refactoring support code using Adam's wonderful PPI module. Adding more "smart" refactoring tools is currently my highest priority.


  • developer avatar

    Patrick Donelan

    I'm an open source developer based in Melbourne, Australia.

    Why are you involved in Padre?

    I was at YAPC::EU 2008 when Gábor proposed the Padre hackathon, and it sounded like fun.

    What are you hacking on?

    The WebGUI Padre plug-in


  • Peter Lavender

    has been using Perl to get things done at work for years. Has always been amazed at what some open source projects achieve and those involved in it.

    Why are you involved in Padre?

    Perl IDE for Perl developers? Awesome!

    I've long wanted to see such a thing. I have used various editors for Perl, vim, Notepad, PFE, and prior to Padre, Notepad++. I watched with some interest the emerging Padre and jumped in quite early, finding that for most things it just worked. The syntax checking the highlighting was great.

    I hung out in #padre and whinged about things that didn't work. I was told to raise tickets in Trac.

    When I submitted my first patch and it was accepted and applied, I was hooked!!!

    Here was a project I could contribute to.

    What are you hacking on?

    My first real attempt at something was with minor annoyances with Padre::DocBrowser.

    Otherwise it's low hanging fruit like adding a dialog to the find dialog when it doesn't find what you are after.

    My current focus is with Padre::Plugin::SVN of which I just packaged up and released Padre-Plugin-SVN-0.02 to CPAN.