s/Perl 6/Perl Forever/
Lets just drop the 5 from Perl 5
11–20 of 34 posts
Re: Lets just drop the 5 from Perl 5
#12What's Larry Wall up to these days, anyway?
Re: Lets just drop the 5 from Perl 5
#13That's disingenuous and doesn't clear up anything. Better: Perl 5 Version 16.
I'm having trouble seeing how any change to something as completely arbitrary as version number schemes could be described as "disingenuous".
How would the Perl community be attempting to "deceive people via a false impression of honesty" by dropping the long-since-atrophied major version number?
What possible point of honesty is served by gluing that 5 to the language in perpetuity, just to continue waiting for Godot to show up?
Re: Lets just drop the 5 from Perl 5
#14Why? Isn't Perl6 the "new hot" thing? You could rename Perl5 to Pearl Classic. (see Python...)
Sadly, the situation is different from Python's. Python 3 is well-defined, with a stable and usable implementation. You can port your code to it today, and even big projects like Django are getting ready to shift over to it. Perl 6's definition continues to change, with no clear spec, and the leading implementation (Rakudo) doesn't have half of the features built. Even if there were a feature-complete implementation…
it is worth noting that since you are trolling a bit, that the changes evident between python 2 and 3 are only about as significant as those from perl5.12 to perl5.14
Re: Lets just drop the 5 from Perl 5
#15Why? Isn't Perl6 the "new hot" thing? You could rename Perl5 to Pearl Classic. (see Python...)
Sadly, the situation is different from Python's. Python 3 is well-defined, with a stable and usable implementation. You can port your code to it today, and even big projects like Django are getting ready to shift over to it. Perl 6's definition continues to change, with no clear spec, and the leading implementation (Rakudo) doesn't have half of the features built. Even if there were a feature-complete implementation…
>>Sadly, the situation is different from Python's.
>>Python 3 is well-defined, with a stable and usable implementation.
It is hard to compare.
The main similarity between Perl 6 and Python 3 is probably the age. The main difference is that Perl 6 is really, really ambitious.
Re: Lets just drop the 5 from Perl 5
#16I always liked the idea of renaming Perl 6 to Rakudo, being the major/official implementation. It's also what most other programming languages do. A major, leading implementation, as well as others following. This would also make it easier for newcomers.
Re: Lets just drop the 5 from Perl 5
#17I always liked the idea of renaming Perl 6 to Rakudo, being the major/official implementation. It's also what most other programming languages do. A major, leading implementation, as well as others following. This would also make it easier for newcomers.
Rakudo is by no means more official than any other implementation (for example currently niecza is quite strong, see https://github.com/sorear/niecza/ for the code).
Renaming Perl 6 to Rakudo makes about as much sense as renaming C to GCC to MSVC.
Rakudo, while a nice name, is also too easy to mistype - even core committers (me included) have frequently misspelled its name in commit messages etc.
Re: Lets just drop the 5 from Perl 5
#18I've been espousing this for years! If java can do it, so can perl. Go go perl 14!
Re: Lets just drop the 5 from Perl 5
#19I almost missed the links in that blog post to the other discussions. They are http://blogs.perl.org/users/alberto_simoes/2011/06/perl-perl... http://www.modernperlbooks.com/mt/2011/06/perl-perl-5-perl-6... http://blogs.perl.org/users/mithaldu/2011/06/why-are-people-... http://jjnapiorkowski.typepad.com/modern-perl/2011/06/perl-5...
I think John's post on the modern perl blog is the most rational dissection of this "problem" that is plaguing the perl community. Few people outside the perl community see "Perl 5" and "Perl 6". For most people referring to the language they simply call it "Perl." For marketing to developers specifically, I think the biggest hurdle isn't the name but the stigma attached to the language. Most developers I talk to out…
I agree.
Nobody want's to invest time into learning something called "Perl 5" when there's something already out there called "Perl 6". Yes, some research into it will reveal that they are now on two separate dev paths, but there is still some mental stigma associated with investing time in learning an "old version" of something. And learning the "newer version" quickly reveals that it is not widely used/supported yet. They are basically two separate languages and should be treated as such.
These days the arena Perl competes in is extremely competitive, and these seemingly small issues will continue to be disastrous for Perl.
Re: Lets just drop the 5 from Perl 5
#20What's Larry Wall up to these days, anyway?
Well, he has a day job, spends significant amounts of his free time on answering questions on the Perl 6 specification and changing it when necessary, and attends many perl conferences (YAPC::NA, YAPC::EU, YAPC::Asia, OSCON) (where Perl 5 and Perl 6 peacefully coexist and share both speakers and audience, fwiw).
Did I mention that he also has a family, and a local church in which he is very active?
Update: I forgot, he also helps Tom Christansen to bring out the next edition of "Programming Perl".