A little over a year ago Mom gave me an iMac as a belated graduation present, and it’s been a godsend. Besides providing me the escape hatch I needed to avoid ever having to work with Vista, just about anything worth doing on a computer has been easier on the Mac.

But the major exception has been LAMP Web development. Getting MySQL installed and conversing with both PHP and Perl (at the same time) has been a terrible experience. In searching for the magic combination of versions to allow creation of database-aware, scripted prototypes, I’ve managed to delete the default installation of Perl, break (and then lose) existing database schema, and have somehow created a permanent schism over where my localhost expects to find default HTML files.

I finally have the pre-installed Apache working with MySQL 5, pre-installed PHP (at least, I think it was pre-installed … at this point I honestly don’t remember), ActiveState Perl 5.8.8, and the DBD::mysql perl interface loaded via CPAN. Versions matter: (Perl 5.10, for example, is missing a lot of needed database modules, and MySQL 4 was having trouble talking to the on-board PHP.) I still don’t have the GD graphics library, which I need for one of my prototypes, but I just can’t face breaking everything again in an attempt to get it installed!

I have no doubt that I caused at least half of my own setup problems, but largely because I can find no coherent repository of support information for this particular application of Mac technology. I have an old no-name Intel box next to the Mac that is running Ubuntu Linux that is drop-dead simple-to-use by comparison.

The best find of the whole experience has been Komodo Edit, the free programming editor from ActiveState. This is available on Windows, Linux, and Mac platforms, has syntax support for a wide range of languages, and has an intuitive, tabbed interface that is well-executed and easy to use.