Raku, Camelia and Rakudo are stupid names.
Perl++ is a good name. C and C++ are different enough and live alongside each other.
Is Perl 6 Being Renamed?
101–110 of 424 posts
Re: Is Perl 6 Being Renamed?
#102I don't get all this "Perl 6 is a different language" nonsense. It was created by Larry Wall and retains all the characteristics of Perl 5 whilst adding a lot of great stuff from other languages. Sadly, performance prevents it being taken seriously in production.
It's a different language because you can't run Perl5 programs unmodified in Perl6. The same is also true of Python2/Python3, which is why that transition has also taken so long. The difference is they managed to do it without everyone abandoning Python2 for something else.
The other difference is that they did not split into a python 2 and python 3 dev team over the period of two decades which then both decided to keep officially developing their respective languages.
Re: Is Perl 6 Being Renamed?
#103Routinely I see in numerous online discussions that people refuse to even consider Perl 6 because they hate Perl. Or there are younger people who think of Perl as "their grandfather's language" (in much the same way people in my generation view COBOL). I am not a fan of Perl, but this feels tragic to me. Perl was so radically different. I remember being on Perlmonks way back in the day, and someone would post a quest…
As a Perl aficionado, thank you for this, it is rare that anyone who does not enjoy Perl will express a positive opinion for it.
Re: Is Perl 6 Being Renamed?
#104Serious question: what does Perl 6 bring to the table? What advantage does it provide over Perl 5, Python 2/3 or Ruby? I could google this (which I will), but give me the HN summary. What do you think is a good reason to use Perl 6?
Off the top of my head:
Concurrency and parallelism using high level and low level APIs. There is no GIL.
Grammars which are like regular expressions on steroids for parsing. ( admittedly still not optimized for speed)
Gradual typing, you can go from no types at all for short one liners, to using built in types, to defining your own complex types for big programs.
subset Positive of Int where { $^number > 0; } #create a new type called Positive
multi factorial(1) { 1 } #multi subroutines that dispatch on type
multi factorial(Positive \n) { n * factorial(n-1) }
#say factorial(0); #Error type mismatch
#say factorial(5.5); #Error type mismatch
say factorial(5); #120
hyper for (1 .. 1000) -> $n { #use hyper indicate for loop can be run in parallel on all available CPUs
say "Factorial of $n is { factorial($n) }"; #Gives correct results by automatically upgrading to big int when needed
}Re: Is Perl 6 Being Renamed?
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Okay, but is it a good, useful programming language? In some ways, the long development timeline suggests a slower, more stable way of doing language changes that appeals a lot to me.
Since you had to ask, I'm guessing you don't use it either.
That doesn't mean there's not a reason to start using it.
Re: Is Perl 6 Being Renamed?
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
I still use Perl 5 for some tasks, but my rule-of-thumb is that if I anticipate wanting to use references, I will go elsewhere.
I suggest and use the opposite rule of thumb, "always use references". It tends to simplify things. Python writes the same rule into the language itself.
When I used it for larger tasks, I did the same. Nowadays, the consequence of my rule is that Perl 5 sits in my toolbox between Awk and Python.
Re: Is Perl 6 Being Renamed?
#107I haven't looked at Perl in years, having long ago switched to Python/SciPy, but now I see that Perl 6 doesn't have GIL, something that Python has been unable to shed. So now a language that nobody cares about anymore solves the #1 problem that I have with Python. We are truly blessed to have so many shitty implementations of dumb programming languages to choose from these days!
I am a Perl user not Raku, and Perl had almost the opposite problem where its threads are concurrent but too badly designed to be useful. But from what I have seen, Raku is second to none in this capability.
Re: Is Perl 6 Being Renamed?
#108I learned Perl4 in grad school and it was a life changing tool to automate my analysis workflow. With it I was able to script complex solutions that drove stepper drivers and CCD cameras on a microscope for data and image collection. I stayed through the Perl5 change over and thought it was good. Then I tried OO programming. And cried. And read that Perl 6 would make it better. But I needed something now, on a window…
What I got from mingling with the Perl community: The single most repeated advice (indeed Larry Wall himself has said it repeatedly), is that one should use whatever tool will allow one to carry out the task at hand and generally get things done.
In that sense, Perl never had you because Perl probably isn't interested in "having" anyone. Maybe helping out people carry out their work, but not having them. It is about getting things done, without trying to be the next big thing in CS. At least that's what I'd like to believe.
If Python helps you carry out your work better, you should most assuredly and definitely use Python. Ditto with PHP, Go, and all the rest. And Perl.
Re: Is Perl 6 Being Renamed?
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
... which is the whole point of renaming it, right? "Oh, it took too long to update Perl and now Perl is dead" is true. "Raku is an interesting new language with some neat features, and excels at this particular type of problem" can also be true. But nobody can hear this message while they keep thinking about Perl.
I doubt it. "Raku is an interesting new language with some neat features..." will be met with "Oh, you mean Perl 6? lol." If Perl is dead, renaming the last version isn't going to change anything.
Perl6 is factually wrong name, it's absolutely new language and as such deserves different name
Re: Is Perl 6 Being Renamed?
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
... which is the whole point of renaming it, right? "Oh, it took too long to update Perl and now Perl is dead" is true. "Raku is an interesting new language with some neat features, and excels at this particular type of problem" can also be true. But nobody can hear this message while they keep thinking about Perl.
I doubt it. "Raku is an interesting new language with some neat features..." will be met with "Oh, you mean Perl 6? lol." If Perl is dead, renaming the last version isn't going to change anything.
Dead, regarding Perl 6, is an interesting thing.
It doesn't mean "no developers or support" because that's at least as true of newly invented languages that HN loves to get excited about. CPAN is a thing and has been for decades.
It doesn't mean "doesn't work, not delivered yet" because there it is.
It doesn't mean "no exciting features" because that's not true either.
It seems to be more of a condemnation than a description. I suspect it's really just a synonym for "passé, uncool, brings back memories of the 1990s I was trying to forget".