On the surface, today's announcement of a shift to Intel chips is
great news for CamelBones developers - Perl code is not, after all,
compiled for a specific CPU type. Given the presence of the
appropriate supporting framework, Perl code should run just as well
on a Mac/Intel as it does on a Mac/PPC.
But there's the rub - the supporting framework.
The problem is how Perl builds XS modules. The perl for which a
module is targeted must be used to build it. So far, that's been
workable - Copying the Jaguar and Panther perls to my Tiger partition
was a bit of a nuisance, but once I had done that, they run just fine.
An Intel-based perl interpreter is another matter entirely. My Mac is
an old G4, and it won't run that. I won't be able to produce a
supporting framework for Intel Macs without buying an Intel Mac.
The question becomes, whether CamelBones by itself justifies such a
purchase. To put it bluntly - no, it doesn't. I've been working on
CamelBones for over three years now. Its original purpose was as a
segue into a career as a Mac developer. That hasn't happened - I'm
still unemployed. If anything, it has actually *hurt* my prospects -
employers looking for a Perl developer have doubts because I haven't
done any CGI work in 3-4 years, and those looking for Cocoa
developers have doubts because I haven't published much Objective-C
work.
The handful of donations I've received (and to those few supporters,
I extend a heartfelt "thank you"), have not been enough to purchase
evan a Mac mini.
Meanwhile, developers like Delicious are using Objective-C to write
shareware apps that net them $250k in registrations in a single
month. Reports like that have been making me *seriously* doubt the
wisdom of what I'm doing.
Sorry to vent folks, but this is seriously depressing. I've invested
three years of my life into this, and the only result has been three
years of unemployment and poverty. And now Apple tells me I have to
make yet another major investment of money and time if I want to
continue with it.
I'm beginning to feel like Sisyphus, working on an endless and
unrewarding task.
This is not a decision to be made lightly, nor quickly. I'm not
writing this to announce the end. But really, something's got to give
here - I need to pay the rent, and so far, CamelBones isn't doing it.
If something doesn't change - a job, serious financial backing,
something - the end may not be very far off.
sherm--
Cocoa programming in Perl: http://camelbones.sourceforge.net
Hire me! My resume: http://www.dot-app.org
