

The Perl 6 project 10 years old today - avar
http://use.perl.org/~masak/journal/40451

======
jamespitts
There's nothing wrong with taking 10 years to create something new. Since they
began, I've taken serious ganders into java and ruby. Now that I'm back in the
perl camp I find that I know a lot more about programming in other cultures.
And now that the community is just about done, I can apply what I've learned
using a "language" unprecedented in flexibility and capability.

~~~
loewenskind
> I can apply what I've learned using a "language" unprecedented in
> flexibility and capability.

This right here is what I've always hated about the perl community. It's so
rare to find a perl user who can mention the language without spouting these
kind of exaggerations and untruths.

Of course you could always prove me wrong by demonstrated how perl is
"flexible" and "capable" in a manner that is _unprecedented_ [1].

[1] un·prec·e·dent·ed

    
    
        adjective
    
        without previous instance; never before known or
        experienced; unexampled or unparalleled: an
        unprecedented event.

~~~
chromatic
Do you know of another language community with a library or extension system
which rivals the CPAN, for one example? How about the existence of PCRE for
another? Along those lines, have you seen Perl 6 grammars?

~~~
loewenskind
The post I responded to said "language" so your comment about CPAN doesn't
apply.

On the second part, I did misread the OP as meaning he would return to _perl
5_ (probably a false mental cache hit, since this is usually the context of
such comments). Perl 6 does indeed have a few interesting bits.

~~~
chromatic
_The post I responded to said "language" so your comment about CPAN doesn't
apply._

Somehow Perl 5 made CPAN possible (and by deliberate language design), so that
guy in a kilt seems truly a Scotsman to me.

~~~
loewenskind
Confusing response. If you want to get down to it, CPAN doesn't really provide
much more functionality than what you can get in most other languages and
provides less than what Java has. CPAN has a tremendous amount of duplication,
has a fair amount of toy code, etc., etc.

------
jbellis
"I count 33 synoptic documents at perlcabal.org. Synopses 2 through 6 tend to
be fairly stable, although changes still occur. The remainder of the synopses
are still drafts for the most part, awaiting more feedback from
implementations and language use."

This is why when people like chromatic invariably comment in a "still waiting
for perl 6 thread" that "you can write perl 6 now!!11!" I roll my eyes.
(Quietly. So they'll go away.)

~~~
chromatic
_This is why when people like chromatic invariably comment in a "still waiting
for perl 6 thread" that "you can write perl 6 now!!11!" I roll my eyes._

Almost five years ago now I ported a piece of Perl 5 code used _millions_ of
times a day to Perl 6. Where is the hyperbole in my statements?

~~~
koenigdavidmj
Well, you can't just leave us hanging like that. What's the program?

------
mkramlich
10 years is also about how long ago I abandoned Perl

~~~
trainwreckin
10 years too early, I'd say. You're missing out on the fun stuff.

------
philwelch
One promising thing about Perl 6 was the way it tried to bring parsers to
everyday programming the way Perl popularized regular expressions. I'm sad the
language seems to have stalled for that reason.

~~~
ekiru
You're almost exactly right there. One promising thing about Perl 6 _is_ the
way it brings parsers to everyday programming the way previous Perls
popularized regexes. :)

Perl 6's approach to syntax, operators, grammars, language extension, etc. is
like Common Lisp's reader macros; except that Perl 6 makes them easy _and_
composable. Common Lisp libraries tend to use reader macros very sparingly
because it's hard to make them play together nicely. Perl 6 makes it easy to
alter the syntax in ways that play together nicely. Many of Rakudo's core
operators are defined in normal Perl 6 code. It's trivial to make new ones of
your own. The more extensive grammar modifications aren't quite there yet, I
think, but it'll happen, and it will be revolutionary.

Fortunately, it hasn't stalled. It's moving along quite well.

~~~
philwelch
"Everyday programming" doesn't necessarily use Perl, and it rarely uses
prerelease programming languages.

Perl 6 has brought parsers (I guess we should call them "grammars" in analogy
to "regular expressions") to certain parts of the (shrinking) Perl community,
but the everyday programming in general hasn't been lit aflame. Perl was
influential enough to get regexes (in one form or another) into nearly every
language in popular use today.

~~~
sigzero
> everyday programming in general hasn't been lit aflame

That isn't quite true. A lot of the things that are happening in P6 have been
backported to P5 and in general has made everyone excited. It is has also
"revitalized" the people working on the core of P5 to think new thoughts as
well.

I don't know if I will move to P6 but I am thankful for what it has done to
P5.

------
rbanffy
The first production-ready release will be on GNU Hurd, right? ;-)

------
sambeau
I'd like to mention Dan Sugalski who, before Audrey, was a similar whirlwind
for the Parrot project. He too was sadly burnt out long before his time.

I highly recommend perusing his well written blogs that wonderfully explain
difficult programming topics.

<http://www.sidhe.org/~dan/blog/>

~~~
sambeau
His "What the heck is" and "What the heck was I thinking?" are particularly
good.

------
zokier
After reading that, it seems like Perl has rather nice community. If Python
has engineers and Ruby rockstars, then I'd say that Perl has hackers.

~~~
sjs
> Python has engineers and Ruby rockstars

This meaningless statement really bugs me. People who write Python _and_ Ruby
aren't rockstar engineers. They're just programmers/developers/[whatever you
like to call them].

People who speak English are simply English speakers. Nothing more can, nor
should, be inferred from that fact.

~~~
reitzensteinm
I think that people blow it out of proportion, but the primary language choice
(and I do mean the language they use when they can chose) of a developer
_does_ imply something, however small.

Assembly programming is different enough to Ruby programming that it does
imply something about a person that prefers working in either the former or
latter environment.

However, the reason I agree with you and upvoted you is that Ruby, Python and
Perl are so similar in mindset that anything you might learn from those
choices is basically lost in the noise. It's like trying to figure out what a
person's choice of colour of parachute means... which is silly, but the fact
that he or she skydives _does_ mean something.

~~~
sjs
I like Ruby and assembly (and C, Python, Lisp, JavaScript, ...). So I agree
that one's primary language may say something about them, but that something
might only be that they happened to land a good job doing X.

------
openfly
It's a spring chicken compared to Enlightenment.

------
ww520
Didn't someone say it take 10 years to develop great software?

~~~
neilk
You're probably thinking of Joel Spolsky's "It Takes Ten Years To Develop
Great Software. Get Used To It".

<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000017.html>

However, Joel explicitly states this means you release _early_ , and iterate.

~~~
chromatic
Pugs first came out in 2005, and by my count it was the _third_ implementation
of Perl 6. Rakudo's a couple of days away from its 31st release. Yes, Perl 6
should have had regular releases much earlier than 2005, but we've used
iterative development for _years_.

------
nicpottier
Perl 6 is the Duke Nukem of the programming world.

