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The Perl 6 project 10 years old today

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Re: The Perl 6 project 10 years old today

#21

Post by philwelch »

perlgeek wrote: post #16
philwelch wrote: post #10

One promising thing about Perl 6 was the way it tried to bring parsers to everyday programming the way Perl popularized regular expressions. I'm sad the language seems to have stalled for that reason.

I'm curious, how did you get that impression? I'm one of the Perl 6 developers, and IMHO the regexes and grammars are one of the "killer" features. And I've also seen them evolve gradually, and have used them for various purposes. What gave you the impression that it has stalled? Is that the general impression on the outside of the Perl 6 community? What kind of marketing could we do to reach you?

From a marketing standpoint, calling it "Perl 6" is a terrible way to market it. Perl 6 implies that it's Perl, which has both good and bad connotations, and it also implies it's just an iteration on Perl 5, when in fact it's one of the most ambitious languages ever conceived. An ambitious new programming language can take ten years to develop and people are only halfway suspicious that it took so long. An iteration on Perl 5 should take nowhere close to ten years to finish. So don't call it Perl 6 :)

If you wanted to keep continuity with the Perl line, then from the outset, it might have been a better idea to plan out a roadmap for Perls 6, 7, 8, and 9 rather than just Perl 6. "Perl with grammars" can be released and then you can move on to the next iteration. "Perl with grammars, objects, lazy evaluation, macros, junctions, optional static typing, and not just one but two kitchen sinks" will take upwards of 10 years to reach final release status. This has the benefit of increasing usability as idioms and common practices for new language features can evolve as each set of features is released. In practice a lot of this has been done for you ("Perl with objects" became Perl 5 + Moose).

Since that didn't happen, I think casual observers are suspicious that second-system effect has taken place with Perl 6 and that it may never really be done.

Re: The Perl 6 project 10 years old today

#22

Post by sjs »

zokier wrote: post #11

After reading that, it seems like Perl has rather nice community. If Python has engineers and Ruby rockstars, then I'd say that Perl has hackers.

> Python has engineers and Ruby rockstars

This meaningless statement really bugs me. People who write Python and Ruby aren't rockstar engineers. They're just programmers/developers/[whatever you like to call them].

People who speak English are simply English speakers. Nothing more can, nor should, be inferred from that fact.

Re: The Perl 6 project 10 years old today

#23

Post by sreque »

jamespitts wrote: post #7

There's nothing wrong with taking 10 years to create something new. Since they began, I've taken serious ganders into java and ruby. Now that I'm back in the perl camp I find that I know a lot more about programming in other cultures. And now that the community is just about done, I can apply what I've learned using a "language" unprecedented in flexibility and capability.

Puts on Perl troll hat

You must not have learned too much, or else you'd have no reason to go back! :)

Re: The Perl 6 project 10 years old today

#24

Post by mst »

philwelch wrote: post #21
perlgeek wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, how did you get that impression? I'm one of the Perl 6 developers, and IMHO the regexes and grammars are one of the "killer" features. And I've also seen them evolve gradually, and have used them for various purposes. What gave you the impression that it has stalled? Is that the general impression on the outside of the Perl 6 community? What kind of marketing could we do to reach you?

From a marketing standpoint, calling it "Perl 6" is a terrible way to market it. Perl 6 implies that it's Perl, which has both good and bad connotations, and it also implies it's just an iteration on Perl 5, when in fact it's one of the most ambitious languages ever conceived. An ambitious new programming language can take ten years to develop and people are only halfway suspicious that it took so long. An iteration…

As I said in my Iron Man forfeit talk, I'd quite like to see the perl6 spec renamed to Camelia Perl - and perl5 renamed to something else as well.

The respective communities for the two languages now very much regard ourselves as two fascinating languages in the same family - one very much production ready, the other still polishing that side but a stunning work of language design research already.

Now it's just a case of our marketing catching up with reality.

Re: The Perl 6 project 10 years old today

#25

Post by mst »

jbellis wrote: post #3

"I count 33 synoptic documents at perlcabal.org. Synopses 2 through 6 tend to be fairly stable, although changes still occur. The remainder of the synopses are still drafts for the most part, awaiting more feedback from implementations and language use." This is why when people like chromatic invariably comment in a "still waiting for perl 6 thread" that "you can write perl 6 now!!11!" I roll my eyes. (Quietly. So th…

People can, and are doing. Much though I'm a happy perl5 programmer, I often use bleeding edge libraries in my implementations when I'm sure that's the best approach (and if it's code for a client after careful consultation with them). People I know doing rails work often use stuff they know may change under them because it lets them ship faster now and they consider it an acceptable trade-off of risks - and the gems they're using generally don't have a spec document at all.

There are risks involved in every technology choice made for every program. If I didn't actively prefer perl5's semantics and community philosophy in a number of places, I'd be seriously evaluating perl6 for use in code where I could guarantee deployment to be pinned against a particular runtime version, just like I -do- use API-unstable perl5 libraries where I can guarantee deployment against a particular library version and the benefits in terms of delivery time outweigh the risks.

Re: The Perl 6 project 10 years old today

#26

Post by mst »

zokier wrote: post #11

After reading that, it seems like Perl has rather nice community. If Python has engineers and Ruby rockstars, then I'd say that Perl has hackers.

Gross generalisation though any such attempt at a single word summary is, I'd say that's nonetheless pretty true at least from the Perl side of things - the 21st century landscape of both the perl5 and perl6 communities is very much about people who consider themselves "Just Another Perl Hacker" - in that while we might be proud of our achievements, there's very little arrogance about our code itself. Of course the lack of "wow hey this is awesome look at me" is one of the key things leading us to need to learn more marketing as a community, but I'll take quiet pragmatism over loud arrogance any day as the primary mindset of the authors of the things I'm depending on in production.

Re: The Perl 6 project 10 years old today

#27

Post by reitzensteinm »

sjs wrote: post #22
zokier wrote: post #11

After reading that, it seems like Perl has rather nice community. If Python has engineers and Ruby rockstars, then I'd say that Perl has hackers.

> Python has engineers and Ruby rockstars This meaningless statement really bugs me. People who write Python and Ruby aren't rockstar engineers. They're just programmers/developers/[whatever you like to call them]. People who speak English are simply English speakers. Nothing more can, nor should, be inferred from that fact.

I think that people blow it out of proportion, but the primary language choice (and I do mean the language they use when they can chose) of a developer does imply something, however small.

Assembly programming is different enough to Ruby programming that it does imply something about a person that prefers working in either the former or latter environment.

However, the reason I agree with you and upvoted you is that Ruby, Python and Perl are so similar in mindset that anything you might learn from those choices is basically lost in the noise. It's like trying to figure out what a person's choice of colour of parachute means... which is silly, but the fact that he or she skydives does mean something.

Re: The Perl 6 project 10 years old today

#28

Post by philwelch »

ekiru wrote: post #12
philwelch wrote: post #10

One promising thing about Perl 6 was the way it tried to bring parsers to everyday programming the way Perl popularized regular expressions. I'm sad the language seems to have stalled for that reason.

You're almost exactly right there. One promising thing about Perl 6 is the way it brings parsers to everyday programming the way previous Perls popularized regexes. :) Perl 6's approach to syntax, operators, grammars, language extension, etc. is like Common Lisp's reader macros; except that Perl 6 makes them easy and composable. Common Lisp libraries tend to use reader macros very sparingly because it's hard to make…

"Everyday programming" doesn't necessarily use Perl, and it rarely uses prerelease programming languages.

Perl 6 has brought parsers (I guess we should call them "grammars" in analogy to "regular expressions") to certain parts of the (shrinking) Perl community, but the everyday programming in general hasn't been lit aflame. Perl was influential enough to get regexes (in one form or another) into nearly every language in popular use today.

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