I'm sort-of intrigued by Perl 6, but a curiosity of mine, which I believe that I share with some other people, is how it's used in the real world, be it in little scripts or commercial software. What are your feelings and comments on Perl 6, and if you use it, how and where you use it (I'd be glad it people shared links to published projects and actual code out in the internet). Thanks in advance!
Ask HN: Perl 6: Do you use it, how do you like it, what do you do with it?
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Re: Ask HN: Perl 6: Do you use it, how do you like it, what do you do with it?
#2I honestly haven't heard of anyone using Perl for anything new. Sure there is a lot of legacy Perl 5 being used and maintained, but Perl 6? For a new project? I've never even seen it on a short list.
Re: Ask HN: Perl 6: Do you use it, how do you like it, what do you do with it?
#3I honestly haven't heard of anyone using Perl for anything new. Sure there is a lot of legacy Perl 5 being used and maintained, but Perl 6? For a new project? I've never even seen it on a short list.
I use perl for new code all the time. It's not a trendy language, so it won't get much coverage on HN, but the language and libraries are great IMO.
Also, perl 6 is effectively a completely different language from 'normal' perl (i.e. perl 5.x). The difference between the two is far far bigger than say python 2 -> 3.
As a perl programmer, I see no obvious benefit from switching from perl 5 -> 6, it would be the same as switching from perl to a completely different language. You're not going to be able to take your existing code and familiar libraries with you.
Re: Ask HN: Perl 6: Do you use it, how do you like it, what do you do with it?
#4I write Perl 5 for a living, we have Perl 6 installed here and I occasionally use it for one-liners[1] that are much less verbose than Perl 5 or most other languages. But nothing else.
Re: Ask HN: Perl 6: Do you use it, how do you like it, what do you do with it?
#5For a long time I thought that Perl 6 would be close to an ideal language for me. I haven't really questioned that belief, but it turns out http://www.red-lang.org is much closer.
Let's say that I'm glad that Perl 6 is there as an option.
Re: Ask HN: Perl 6: Do you use it, how do you like it, what do you do with it?
#6I've been using it locally to write a few small scripts, nothing publicly available (yet).
Traits and roles are really neat - they feel like a natural conclusion to what Ruby started building upon with respect to metaprogramming natural syntax and encouraging developer happiness over strictness.
On the whole, however, many small parts of Perl 6 feel immature. There's no core JSON/YAML module, and there's no "official" module manager yet - just panda[1] and a few others.
Overall I'd recommend tinkering with it, but I don't think it's ready (as an ecosystem) for larger development. Hopefully soon, though!
Re: Ask HN: Perl 6: Do you use it, how do you like it, what do you do with it?
#7I honestly haven't heard of anyone using Perl for anything new. Sure there is a lot of legacy Perl 5 being used and maintained, but Perl 6? For a new project? I've never even seen it on a short list.
I use perl for new code all the time. It's not a trendy language, so it won't get much coverage on HN, but the language and libraries are great IMO. Also, perl 6 is effectively a completely different language from 'normal' perl (i.e. perl 5.x). The difference between the two is far far bigger than say python 2 -> 3. As a perl programmer, I see no obvious benefit from switching from perl 5 -> 6, it would be the same a…
IIRC there's a module for parsing and running Perl 5 in 6. Am I wrong or is it not practically useful?
Re: Ask HN: Perl 6: Do you use it, how do you like it, what do you do with it?
#8follow-up: for a non-Perl person, who is incredibly interested in getting started with Perl 6, are there any good resources (code examples, blog posts exploring language concepts unique to Perl 6) that anyone would recommend?
Re: Ask HN: Perl 6: Do you use it, how do you like it, what do you do with it?
#9I used perl6 to write a mini-webservice, an API-wrapper for a weather forecast API my bash script is speaking to – I of course don't want users to have to generate API keys, hence the wrapper. Programming that was straightforward, the language itself nice and powerful. But of course I did not really need a powerful language for that task.
I had issues finding the right modules to use, like which webserver to use, with which module to make http requests. But the biggest issue was that the hoster I initially wanted to use doesn't have perl6 pre-installed, and compiling it fails because the compilation itself uses too much memory. I then moved it to a bare metal server, where compiling Rakudo Star succeeded.
The whole Rakudo Star thing, that there are different VMs (that there are VMs in the first place), that there are different module manager, all that was totally confusing. But I liked the language itself a bit, it was nice testing something else.
Re: Ask HN: Perl 6: Do you use it, how do you like it, what do you do with it?
#10So this doesn't help with your question but I'm sure i'm not alone on this one...
I hadn't even realized Perl 6 was out! I remember years ago it kind of being labeled as the "Duke Nukem Forever" of programming languages versions. I don't personally use it but I'm glad to see it is out (even if I found out a year late).