

Welcome Rakudo Star - draegtun
http://www.perl.com/pub/2010/07/welcome-rakudo-star.html

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expeditious
Some unsubstantiated ravings:

* Everyone I've encountered online who has used both Perl 5 and Perl 6 says that they like Perl 6 (the language) better.

* This first Rakudo Star release _is not optimized at all_ , which is fine and not a surprise. Everyone by now should know that one of the golden rules is: "make it work, make right, _then_ make it fast." Rakudo is (fwict) mostly still on the first step there.

* There are a large number of Perl 5 users who, years ago, got excited about Perl 6, and then eventually needed to get back to work with Perl 5 and subsequently went quiet on Perl 6. I think you're going to see more and more of these people getting re-interested in Perl 6.

* I keep hearing "Perl 5 isn't going anywhere". I think that's correct, however, that comment usually implies "it's not going to disappear tomorrow". I think it has a 2nd meaning, and that is: it's not going to continue to move forward very much now that Perl 6 is here.

* Perl 6 needs its own real forum. Perlmonks has a _decidedly_ Perl 5 feel to it, and although #perl6 on irc is a friendly place, users need a regular online forum. Someone needs to just choose one, install it, pick a pretty theme, slap a Camelia logo on it, and get it running. Not a mailing list, not a google group, not irc, but an actual factual forum. It doesn't have to have karma or voting or a chatterbox right now, it just has to have a working forum.

* Go Offer Kaye! Keep those "Gentle Intro" blog posts coming. [http://blogs.perl.org/users/offerkaye/2010/07/p6-gentle-intr...](http://blogs.perl.org/users/offerkaye/2010/07/p6-gentle-intro-part-2.html) . Many new Perl 6 users will want to write in baby-Perl6, and little easy tutorials like these (and Szabgab's screencasts) are a great help.

~~~
draegtun
Some good points there. Here is my POV on a couple of them:

 _Everyone I've encountered online who has used both Perl 5 and Perl 6 says
that they like Perl 6 (the language) better._

My heart loves perl6 whereas my head prefers perl5 :) Fortunately the syntax
and semantics between them are so close I don't think I'll ever have an issue
switching between them (in fact this maybe become a good consultancy
requirement, ie. job opportunity, for the future?).

re: future of perl5 - There is good momentum behind perl5 & CPAN at the moment
that I doubt it will be deflected at all by perl6 for quite a while. In fact I
wouldn't be surprised if perl6 draws a bigger attention from outside of the
perl5 world.

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rjbond3rd
It's great to see Perl.com getting revamped.

I wonder what the editorial direction will be, relative to the other official
Perl sites (which have improved tremendously in the last year).

~~~
draegtun
Here is the announcement of the Perl.com revamp which gave a little insight
into editorial direction: <http://www.perl.com/pub/2010/07/relaunching-
perlcom.html>

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GeneralMaximus
Just built it on Snow Leopard (it's not on MacPorts yet). Sadly, there are a
couple of independent documentation projects underway but no "official" docs.
Since I have a day or two to spare, can anyone point me to a learning resource
(Python/ObjC guy here)?

~~~
ekiru
Check out the PDF of the draft of the Perl 6 book in the R * distribution (as
docs/UsingPerl6-draft.pdf or something similar).

The Perl 5 to 6 articles at <http://perlgeek.de/en/article/5-to-6> are very
helpful even if you aren't familiar with Perl 5. One thing to remember about
them is that they describe Perl 6 as specified, regardless of whether any of
the implementations fully support the relevant features.

The Perl 6 Advent Calendar from last Winter
([http://perl6advent.wordpress.com/2009/12/01/perl-6-advent-
ca...](http://perl6advent.wordpress.com/2009/12/01/perl-6-advent-calendar/))
is more of a "Here are some really cool things about Perl 6" series of
articles, but they are also pretty good reads for learning the language.

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Another1
with parallel computing becoming all the rage, i wonder why the makers of Perl
6 did not focus on it?

~~~
chromatic
What leads you to believe it's not a focus?

~~~
Another1
from what i read online, concurrency is still a draft, its not implemented and
that the killer new feature is its grammar and regex

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wazoox
Make yourself familiar with Perl6!

