

Ask HN: Test-driving a Porsche: Arc or Perl 6? - platter32

I've been trying to make time to learn some Arc, however...<p>The Perl 6 development effort has been showing a lot of progress lately, and the language itself seems pretty cool.<p>Are Arc and Perl 6 both [Porsches][1]? Which do you think will be more fun to drive, and why?<p>[1]: http://www.paulgraham.com/design.html
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mechanical_fish
Like many people, I used to really like Perl 5 and I wrote some important code
in it, though I feel that I never really understood a lot of its remote
corners. But all I've seen of Perl 6 is its Wikipedia page, which I have just
read. And now, for some reason, the image from this article is stuck in my
mind:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oh_brother_where_art_thou>

"Powerful like a gorilla, yet soft and yielding like a Nerf ball."

Somehow, Wikipedia's definition of the _second-system effect_ feels incomplete
without a link to Perl 6.

I'd play with Arc. It's small, young, designed to be comprehensible, and based
on _one_ classic language instead of on all of them at once.

~~~
platter32
That's a clever analogy (to the "Homer"), and it stuck in my mind too,
however, upon closer inspection it doesn't really hold water. Homer designed
"The Homer". Herb expressly told the engineers not to tell him what Homer was
asking of them -- just to do it.

With Perl 6 that's not so. Larry and Company are a group of very smart,
talented, and dedicated developers who are working daily to create exactly
what they think will make an awesome programming language... (and that's after
extensive (an understatement) experience with Perl 5).

Anyway, thank you for the great reply. My hunch is that both languages will
probably be "fun to drive" (in their own ways), though, how long it takes you
to _learn_ to drive it, and what you can _do_ with it once you're out on the
open road, may vary.

Edit: built Perl 6 (erm, Parrot and Rakudo) and tried it out at a very
elementary level. Planning on putting a few hours into Arc this weekend.

