Why is Funding Perl Core Development So Difficult?
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Why is Funding Perl Core Development So Difficult?
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Re: Why is Funding Perl Core Development So Difficult?
#2There are two things here, one is lack of funding, and the other is lack of technical talent working on the project. To a certain degree the former can compensate for the latter, since if you're a company and you believe enough in your language to think that investing staff hours in improving it is a net-win for you, you'll do it. As it turns out, attracting and keeping technical talent is hard.
Re: Why is Funding Perl Core Development So Difficult?
#3Someone is going to say -- "perl ? Does any one use it ? I had to maintain a project in perl 6 years back and I absolutely hated it ..."
Disregard him. He sucks candy.
EDIT: The downvotes are acting a ( ) for all the candy suckers. Checkout their useless profiles, and memorize their silly nick's.
ha ha !
Re: Why is Funding Perl Core Development So Difficult?
#4In part I think it's because Perl is done. It works. It's effective.
Extending Perl beyond what Perl is makes Perl something else. Perl 6 is barely Perl in any classical sense.
The "Swiss Army Chainsaw" was never intended to be Java or C#. Its weaknesses, a lack of formal typing, a small, simple set of core data structures, a terse and convoluted syntax, are actually its strengths.
Just as C++ is not really C, and Java is certainly not C++, Perl would be better suited by some kind of successor language that embodies the Perl spirit without having to carry forward on the same code-base or concern itself with legacy. I don't think Perl 6 is this thing.
Re: Why is Funding Perl Core Development So Difficult?
#5Most of these points are definitely valid (kudos to ActiveState, yeah parallelism could use a boost, and we're definitely no longer in Kansas when it concerns perl 6).
However, I do agree with the notion that perl should just stay perl. Do we really need opaque objects? hygenic macros?
The backer issue is relevant though. I always wondered if Objective-C would have died off in a corner somewhere if not for the iPhone and Apple backing it. Perhaps strong backing from a powerful modern company would do the trick. I'd cast my vote for Amazon :)
Re: Why is Funding Perl Core Development So Difficult?
#6Someone is going to say -- "perl ? Does any one use it ? I had to maintain a project in perl 6 years back and I absolutely hated it ..." Disregard him. He sucks candy. EDIT: The downvotes are acting a ( ) for all the candy suckers. Checkout their useless profiles, and memorize their silly nick's. ha ha !
Yeah, but if you get one of those responses to every post about your language/framework of choice, then maybe it's time to read the signs on the wall.
Re: Why is Funding Perl Core Development So Difficult?
#7Someone is going to say -- "perl ? Does any one use it ? I had to maintain a project in perl 6 years back and I absolutely hated it ..." Disregard him. He sucks candy. EDIT: The downvotes are acting a ( ) for all the candy suckers. Checkout their useless profiles, and memorize their silly nick's. ha ha !
Yeah, but if you get one of those responses to every post about your language/framework of choice, then maybe it's time to read the signs on the wall.
What's your favorite candy ?
Re: Why is Funding Perl Core Development So Difficult?
#8In part I think it's because Perl is done. It works. It's effective. Extending Perl beyond what Perl is makes Perl something else. Perl 6 is barely Perl in any classical sense. The "Swiss Army Chainsaw" was never intended to be Java or C#. Its weaknesses, a lack of formal typing, a small, simple set of core data structures, a terse and convoluted syntax, are actually its strengths. Just as C++ is not really C, and Ja…
Perl 6 sucked some air out of the room, too. The final, official decision to keep Perl 5 alive indefinitely and declaring them to be separate languages is still relatively young.
But I tend to agree that to a large degree, it's done. Many new features that were mentioned would require major overhauls to the language. You can't just bolt "better parallelism" on to a language, for instance. And macros would make what is already a fairly large language even larger, along with the fact that it wouldn't really buy you that much vs. what you can already do.
Re: Why is Funding Perl Core Development So Difficult?
#9Most of these points are definitely valid (kudos to ActiveState, yeah parallelism could use a boost, and we're definitely no longer in Kansas when it concerns perl 6). However, I do agree with the notion that perl should just stay perl. Do we really need opaque objects? hygenic macros? The backer issue is relevant though. I always wondered if Objective-C would have died off in a corner somewhere if not for the iPhone…
I'm not sure hygienic macros are gonna be that much of a top-seller in user code, I agree. But there are situations where it would be very handy, especially as library developer. Macros would for example make optimized code generation a lot nicer.
I feel it's the same with the work towards a core MOP. It will be hard to convince regular users why the new thing is better, but for people writing extension, auto-documentation tools, or other introspective systems it'd be a huge relief (at least to me). The difference I see is that instead of extending OO in the sense of a framework on top (Object::Tiny, Class::Accessor), you compose in behavioral extensions.
Re: Why is Funding Perl Core Development So Difficult?
#10In part I think it's because Perl is done. It works. It's effective. Extending Perl beyond what Perl is makes Perl something else. Perl 6 is barely Perl in any classical sense. The "Swiss Army Chainsaw" was never intended to be Java or C#. Its weaknesses, a lack of formal typing, a small, simple set of core data structures, a terse and convoluted syntax, are actually its strengths. Just as C++ is not really C, and Ja…
Quite a bit of work is still being done on Perl 5.