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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

#31

Post by sigzero »

philwelch wrote: post #28
ekiru wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> everyday programming in general hasn't been lit aflame

That isn't quite true. A lot of the things that are happening in P6 have been backported to P5 and in general has made everyone excited. It is has also "revitalized" the people working on the core of P5 to think new thoughts as well.

I don't know if I will move to P6 but I am thankful for what it has done to P5.

Re: The Perl 6 project 10 years old today

#32

Post by chromatic »

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…

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.

Almost five years ago now I ported a piece of Perl 5 code used millions of times a day to Perl 6. Where is the hyperbole in my statements?

Re: The Perl 6 project 10 years old today

#33

Post by sigzero »

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…

In my mind they made the same marketing mistake Microsoft did. You had VB6 and then .NET came along and they tried to say that VB.NET was just another VB. VB.NET is totally different. Perl6 is not Perl.

Re: The Perl 6 project 10 years old today

#34

Post by chromatic »

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…

From a marketing standpoint,

Without disagreeing with you, I wonder how you can judge the marketing success or failure of a project intended to last at least 20 years at this point in its adoption cycle.

Re: The Perl 6 project 10 years old today

#35

Post by koenigdavidmj »

chromatic wrote: post #32
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…

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. Almost five years ago now I ported a piece of Perl 5 code used millions of times a day to Perl 6. Where is the hyperbole in my statements?

Well, you can't just leave us hanging like that. What's the program?

Re: The Perl 6 project 10 years old today

#36

Post by chromatic »

sigzero wrote: post #33
philwelch wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In my mind they made the same marketing mistake Microsoft did. You had VB6 and then .NET came along and they tried to say that VB.NET was just another VB. VB.NET is totally different. Perl6 is not Perl.

Perl6 is not Perl.

Did you mean to write "Perl 6 is not Perl 5"?

Re: The Perl 6 project 10 years old today

#37

Post by neilk »

chromatic wrote: post #34
philwelch wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

From a marketing standpoint, Without disagreeing with you, I wonder how you can judge the marketing success or failure of a project intended to last at least 20 years at this point in its adoption cycle.

Dude. The guy went out of his way to be positive about something the whole internet finds dubious at this point.

Are there any valid criticisms to be made of Perl 6 or its process?

Re: The Perl 6 project 10 years old today

#38

Post by chromatic »

neilk wrote: post #37
chromatic wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a marketing standpoint, Without disagreeing with you, I wonder how you can judge the marketing success or failure of a project intended to last at least 20 years at this point in its adoption cycle.

Dude. The guy went out of his way to be positive about something the whole internet finds dubious at this point. Are there any valid criticisms to be made of Perl 6 or its process?

Are there any valid criticisms to be made of Perl 6 or its process?

Certainly. The failure to have a Perl 6 running on Parrot within a few months of Parrot's inception hurt development immensely. The RFC process demonstrated that the initial idea of a Python 3000 style rearranging of a few external features and some internal structures was not nearly ambitious enough. Rethinking regular expressions into grammars was a huge example of hubris.

My point stands, though: the intent of Perl 6 was never to create a language or runtime or compiler which would gradually succumb to a Perl 7 which would gradually succumb to a Perl 8 and so on. Since the RFC process the intent of Perl 6 has to been to create a Perl which solves the limitations and flaws of Perl 5 and can thrive for the next twenty or more years.

Put another way, the most important feature of Perl 6 is that is provides what Larry always intended of Perl 5: a language which allows you to create your own lexically-scoped dialects as necessary.

Re: The Perl 6 project 10 years old today

#39

Post by adbge »

ww520 wrote: post #29

Didn't someone say it take 10 years to develop great software?

I think you're referring to the belief that it takes 10,000 hours of practice in order to "become a world class expert in anything." This "10,000 hour rule" was made famous by the book Outliers and is primarily based on the research of K. Anders Ericsson. 10,000 hours of practice is often equated to 10 years, though I'm not sure if the book explicitly makes this parallel.

Re: The Perl 6 project 10 years old today

#40

Post by sjs »

reitzensteinm wrote: post #27
sjs wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I like Ruby and assembly (and C, Python, Lisp, JavaScript, ...). So I agree that one's primary language may say something about them, but that something might only be that they happened to land a good job doing X.
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