

Parrot VM v1.0.0 released - johnm
http://www.parrot.org/news/2009/Parrot-1.0.0

======
philjackson
I commend the poster for having the will power required to omit an exclamation
mark from the end of that title.

~~~
johnm
:-)

Since the separation of Parrot from the development of Perl 6, I do think it's
fair to say that progress has been good.

------
Steve0
Site is down, I was curious so I googled a bit:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parrot_virtual_machine>

_Parrot is a register-based virtual machine being developed using the C
programming language and intended to run dynamic languages efficiently. It
uses just-in-time compilation for speed to reduce the interpretation overhead.
It is currently possible to compile Parrot assembly language and PIR (an
intermediate language) to Parrot bytecode and execute it._

 _Parrot was started by the Perl community, and is developed with help from
the open source and free software communities._

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jballanc
Parrot's biggest issue is that they don't have a First-among-equals language
that they can do better than anyone else. JVM has Java, CLR has C#, even Perl
6 has moved to PUGS. I commend the Parrot team for the amazing effort they've
been showing, but I'd liken this to Duke Nukem Forever finally settling on a
Physics Engine...

~~~
johnm
What language do you think would be best for them/someone to move to Parrot as
their base platform?

Given Parrot's very dynamic nature, a dynamic language seems like a good idea.
Io would be quite interesting but it's too esoteric at this point so perhaps a
more popular prototype-based language like JavaScript? What about dumping the
old, crappy C-based implementation of Ruby for Parrot?

~~~
jballanc
Actually, JavaScript would be kind of interesting as a First-among-equals
language. The more I work with JS, the more I get the feeling that it's a
wonderful language crippled by a tragic standard library and a horrible run
time.

~~~
jrockway
JavaScript has some great runtimes; V8 and Tracemonkey are very fast. The
standard library is also fine, you probably only dislike the W3C DOM. Pretty
much everyone agrees that that is one of the worst APIs ever designed, and
that's why it's been replaced (or rather, hidden) by things like jQuery.

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reitzensteinm
They should have waited another 14 days.

~~~
draegtun
What 31st March? ;-)

Parrot 1.0 was released on 17th March.. as scheduled.

------
Dobbs
Parrot is out but perl 6 is only half way complete. The closest implementation
has (warning!: second hand knowledge) passed 7,000 spec tests. There will be
an estimated 15,000 spec tests when they are finished being written.

~~~
gamache
Halfway complete means Perl 6 will drop sometime around 2020. Sounds about
right to me.

~~~
draegtun
Not quite.

What it means is Parrot now has a stable API for language developers....
[http://perlbuzz.com/2008/11/parrot-10-will-be-out-in-
march-2...](http://perlbuzz.com/2008/11/parrot-10-will-be-out-in-
march-2009.html)

Its looks like Rakudo 1.0 (Perl6 on Parrot) is earmarked for next year... 10
years earlier than you feared ;-)

~~~
gamache
Sounds good, but at this point I take any Perl 6 date projections with a big
fat salt lick.

Years ago, I slacked on updating my 2nd edition Camel Book to 3rd edition,
figuring that I would just wait for the Perl 6 version. Ten years ago. The
book is not in very good shape these days.

~~~
draegtun
Well Perl5 isn't disappearing because Perl6 is coming around the corner.... in
fact the opposite there are lots of cools things happening right now in Perl5
world (see Moose, MooseX::Declare, etc).

So perhaps you should upgrade your Camel book or look at "Perl Best Practices"
by Damian Conway. Also keep an eye on <http://www.modernperlbooks.com>

As for Perl6/Rakudo... no need to wait its already here! Clearly its still
"beta" but that shouldn't stop you downloading and playing with it.

~~~
gamache
I've read _Perl Best Practices_. Good book. I don't agree with every single
one (the deep ?: structures in particular) but everything in there is very
sane. I've also found that with <http://perldoc.perl.org>, I don't have to
refer to the book much at all.

However, these days I favor Ruby over Perl. Especially now that the
interpreter is not dog-slow anymore.

~~~
mst
I'd move to ruby but the OO's a bit limited for my tastes - no multiple
inheritance and a fairly minimalist mixin system just doesn't cut it after
doing perl/python OO and using assorted lisps for prototyping.

Of course, every ruby dev I've spoken to about this has basically said "you
don't need anything more, and if you do want it, that means your design is
wrong" - which brings us immediately into a question of opinion so I can't
really argue either way about it.

I do find perl5 v10 w/MooseX::Declare to be very much "ruby, but with a more
flexible object system" though ...

~~~
tene
One of the things I was looking forward to in implementing Ruby on Parrot was
using real OO. I don't really mind ruby's syntax too much, but the OO was
frustrating.

------
StrawberryFrog
\- That website is dead!

\+ No it's not, it's just resting.

\- Resting? I know a " operation timed out" when I see one.

\+ It's pining for the fjords.

... etc.

~~~
jrockway
Ah, so the script that automatically posts this skit to Reddit whenever the
word "Parrot" is mentioned works with HN now. Very nice.

Or should I say, this joke was funny about 5 years ago. After being used 150
times since then, it's really lost its charm.

~~~
StrawberryFrog
"whenever the word "Parrot" is mentioned"? No, I posted it because the website
as as dead as a parrot. And ended with "etc" quite quickly because, yeah, old
gag.

