"A new version, Perl 6, is on its way but still under development."
Terrible article, it ignores so many of the issues that have directly led to Perl's downturn in popularity and just hand-waves that Perl is still alive and kicking. The phantom of Perl 6 has been a weight around the community's neck for years, and the incremental 5.x releases with unrealized promises of 6 have probably driven away many developers to newer, sexier languages, that can deliver a major release in under a decade.
I know that this is incorrect, but the promise of Perl 6 has kept me away from Perl for years. I haven't touched a line of Perl since 1995, and I keep wanting to pick it back up; but then my inner curmudgeon reminds me that Perl 6 is coming "Real Soon Now" and I move on to something else. I'm sure I can't be the only one who does this.
Again, I know that this isn't a valid argument, but it's enough for me to focus on other languages when I'm toying around with ideas.
> ... newer, sexier languages, that can deliver a major release in under a decade.
Did you know that Guido switched jobs in spring 2000 (not a typo) to work, in part, on Python 3000? Python 3 is older than Perl 6, and it's a much less modest project. Compare Perl 6 rules and grammars to anything Python 3000 invented, for example.
Perl6 is actually pretty useable as is now also. I wouldn't say production ready but It really is real close and I can use it for personal projects already.
Py3k has been in the planning stages since 2000, but that doesn't really capture the differences in development between Perl and Python over that time period. Python 2.0 was referred to as Python 2000, and so the next logical step was Python 3000, which was planned to be a backwards incompatible release. In the meantime, Python made seven major 2.x releases, adding a ton of features, such as:
1. New Style Classes
2. Closures
3. List Comprehensions
4. Generators
5. Decorators
6. The With Statement
Those are just the big ones -- there are a lot of other changes as well as tons of library improvements.
Whatever could possibly give you that impression from what I wrote? You've read way, way too much into my use of the word "modest".
As far as I can tell, Guido's goal with Python 3000 was not to invent anything. It was to clean up the language in minor ways. That's well and that's good, but it's silly to compare that with Larry's goal for Perl 6.
Terrible article, it ignores so many of the issues that have directly led to Perl's downturn in popularity and just hand-waves that Perl is still alive and kicking. The phantom of Perl 6 has been a weight around the community's neck for years, and the incremental 5.x releases with unrealized promises of 6 have probably driven away many developers to newer, sexier languages, that can deliver a major release in under a decade.