Computer users don't care much about how a program is coded or how much work it took to get it on their desktop. Software developers, on the other hand, are under constant pressure to deliver on schedule, cost, and quality. They grab any tool that makes producing software faster, cheaper, and better.

ActiveState had been doing Perl tools since day one and up until early 2000 didn't have an integrated development environment product. After numerous customer requests, the team decided that since the company was expanding from a "Perl for Windows" shop to a company that supported a variety of programming languages, it was a good time to take on the task. Thus, was born Komodo.

The newly formed Komodo group's mandate was to provide deep support for various programming languages including Perl, PHP, Python, Tcl, XSLT, as well as web standards like XML, HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. It seemed only natural to support programming on both the Windows and Linux platforms.

"People use Komodo in more ways than I'd ever imagined, from web development to building very complex applications to editing HTML and XML," said David Ascher, Senior Developer for the Komodo product. "Many of our customers use Komodo at work on Windows and then at home on Linux--they really like having the same tool available on multiple platforms," Ascher said.

This flexible approach must be working, since Yahoo! is a big user of Komodo for PHP development. The application development tool also recently grabbed the Best Development Tool award at the recent LinuxWorld Expo in San Francisco.

So what makes Komodo so appealing?

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