A helpful Perl script gives you an immediate overview of your financial status, adding the balances of multiple accounts and share depots. It even allows users to add their own plugins.

Perl gives you better shell scripts. Sysadm::Install, a new module from CPAN, helps shell addicts let go of Bash.

Ruby is a very elegant language,and it’s harmonious – the parts work together effectively. Ruby also significantly reduces a developer’s burden. We’ll show you how to use Ruby to build a quick and simple web spider application.

Most web libraries make 90 percent of the job simple and the rest impossible. Rails,an open source framework programmed in Ruby,is flexible enough to succeed with that remaining 10 percent.

To get past a firewall and into a LAN,you need either a secret backdoor or a cooperative agent on the inside. A Jabber client on the LAN contacts a public Jabber server and wait for instructions trickling in as instant messages from its Internet buddies.

A number of useful development environments are available for Python in Linux. We’ll show you around some popular Python IDEs that are more than just text editors.