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Perl 6 Optimism

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Re: Perl 6 Optimism

#31

Post by skywhopper »

simias wrote: post #8
joosters wrote: post #2

I don’t understand why Perl 5 and 6 are still tied together as if they are the same language. There’s no compatibility between the two. You can’t write a library that works in both versions, so you lose CPAN and the thousands of packages that make Perl so powerful. I don’t think there’s even any reliable way to translate Perl 5 source code. This is a vastly larger change than python 2->3, and people are still using p…

Pretty much. I used to use Perl 5 a lot but I never considered using Perl 6 and eventually moved on from the Perl ecosystem altogether. The huge advantage of Perl ~10 years ago was the massive amount of CPAN packages but in the meantime python & friends mostly caught up in my experience. Meanwhile the shiny new revolutionary Perl 6 took forever to release and when it finally did nobody cared anymore. Quoting Wikipedi…

Yeah... sometime around 2007 or so they finally admitted as much and started updating Perl 5 more regularly. But it's been a ridiculous journey. No project that starts out to rewrite a long-established and entrenched piece of software from the ground up ever ends up being a smooth transition. It's best to admit as soon as it's clear what's happening that you are doing something entirely new, and let the old project live out its own lifecycle.

What I've heard about Perl 6 does sound intriguing, and probably a solid language platform does take a good decade-plus to get on solid footing. But re-using the name of a once-well-loved and established language is a bad move for both the old and the new versions.

Re: Perl 6 Optimism

#32

Post by fnord123 »

yesbut wrote: post #10
sunseb wrote: post #3

Is Perl 6 sill so damn slow?

Performance has improved a lot since the initial release: https://perl6advent.wordpress.com/2017/12/16/day-16-%F0%9F%8...

Performance improved a lot but it's still very bad. e.g. there is some csv-game[1] where there is perl6 code that used to take 16 minutes but now 'only' takes 5 minutes.

perl5 completes the task in [1] https://bitbucket.org/ewanhiggs/csv-game/src/9604dc176b6303e...

Re: Perl 6 Optimism

#33

Post by raldi »

cesarb wrote: post #15
yorwba wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? It's a neat way of showing off fundamental Unicode support, and AFAIK there are ASCII equivalents for all of them, in case you have no idea how to enter ⤐ or whatever.

> in case you have no idea how to enter ⤐ or whatever. Did you mean to type a black square there, or is my Android phone missing a font? In any case, this shows a potential issue with using Unicode characters for operators or identifiers: unless it's from a common Unicode block (like basic Greek letters), it might not be readable. It's not just writing that can be a problem.

Paste the character into Google search or Wikipedia URL to find out.

Re: Perl 6 Optimism

#34

Post by jbucaran »

joosters wrote: post #2

I don’t understand why Perl 5 and 6 are still tied together as if they are the same language. There’s no compatibility between the two. You can’t write a library that works in both versions, so you lose CPAN and the thousands of packages that make Perl so powerful. I don’t think there’s even any reliable way to translate Perl 5 source code. This is a vastly larger change than python 2->3, and people are still using p…

Yeah, but I think it's because they have the same name, only the number on the right is different and people tend to assume that Perl 6 is the one after 5.

Re: Perl 6 Optimism

#35

Post by alien_at_work »

joosters wrote: post #2

I don’t understand why Perl 5 and 6 are still tied together as if they are the same language. There’s no compatibility between the two. You can’t write a library that works in both versions, so you lose CPAN and the thousands of packages that make Perl so powerful. I don’t think there’s even any reliable way to translate Perl 5 source code. This is a vastly larger change than python 2->3, and people are still using p…

>I don’t understand why Perl 5 and 6 are still tied together as if they are the same language.

A lot of people seem to have forgotten, or maybe they weren't around for it, but when Larry anounced Perl 6 it wasn't for a totally different language. It was the next version of Perl. Just as Perl 5 was to Perl 4, and 4 was to 3 and so on. This idea that it's a completely different language and has no relation with 5 is something people started saying when it was clear that Perl 6 wasn't just around the corner.

Re: Perl 6 Optimism

#36

Post by raldi »

stesch wrote: post #5

I'm still wondering why they use non ASCII characters for operators.

Once you decide your language is going to allow a programmer to have a variable called `meðaltal` instead of `average`, it's not much extra work to let them use an operator called `Σ`.

Re: Perl 6 Optimism

#38

Post by zimpenfish »

bigbluedots wrote: post #37

Is anybody here using perl 6 in production at the moment? Or perl 5 for that matter?

Perl 5? Off the top of my head: Deutsche Bank, Broadbean, Photobox, BBC, Booking.com, Net-A-Porter. I'm sure a more enthusiastic Perl user can provide a surfeit of examples.

Re: Perl 6 Optimism

#39

Post by vgy7ujm »

zimpenfish wrote: post #38
bigbluedots wrote: post #37

Is anybody here using perl 6 in production at the moment? Or perl 5 for that matter?

Perl 5? Off the top of my head: Deutsche Bank, Broadbean, Photobox, BBC, Booking.com, Net-A-Porter. I'm sure a more enthusiastic Perl user can provide a surfeit of examples.

DuckDuckGo, ZipRecruiter

Re: Perl 6 Optimism

#40

Post by crusso »

I spent a huge amount of time in my 20's writing Perl 4 & 5 scripts. Even though I no longer use Perl, I still feel nostalgic about it.

That said, I can't find any reason to pick up Perl 6 and start learning it. With so many other useful and interesting languages out there: Python, Elixir, Elm, Rust, etc... what appeal should Perl 6 have to the masses these days?

Is anyone jumping into Perl 6 like they did with Ruby a decade ago and saying, "Wow, programming just got fun again"?

I'd love to see a Perl 6 breakthrough, but honestly it feels like those attempts to keep BeOS going... too little, too late. Its time has passed.

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