> Why would I learn this rather than Haskell? You wouldn't. That is to say: You might learn Haskell if you want do write 100% functional code, and Perl 6 if you want to write imperative/procedural/OO code with functional idioms mixed in here and there (in places where that facilitates a more elegant approach). I.e. the two languages are not really competing in the same category. Even though Perl 6 has first-class cod…
> lack of static typing
A key feature of Perl 6 is optional static nominal typing:
The first line of code I ever wrote was in Basic. It was copying something in a book. Then I wrote routines on a Ti calculator for school. Then I found Perl. I felt all grown up! Maybe, just maybe I could be a "real" programmer. Thank you Perl.
Forgive me for this, but why is it still called Perl 6? I've been a professional Perl developer for a long time, and I've followed Perl 6 since the first announcements. There is some impressive and really interesting work going on there, but from my perspective it seems to be a new language rather than a new version of Perl. I fully support the development of Perl 6, but I really wish the name would change to somethi…
> I've been a professional Perl developer for a long time, and I've followed Perl 6 since the first announcements. There is some impressive and really interesting work going on there, but from my perspective it seems to be a new language rather than a new version of Perl. It's both, really. If you use it (and after a while of getting used it), it just feels like perl. > I fully support the development of Perl 6, but…
Yeah, something like Perl++, Perl 10/Perl X, or something that indicted the scope of the difference in the rewrite would have been nice, though I think it's too late at this point. Ten years ago it would have helped, now 'Perl 6' has been floating around for fifteen years.
I'm a Perl 6 core developer (compiler, test suite, docs, design documents, infrastructure). Ask me anything :-)
Something I've wondered for a while: why was the decision made to write yet another dynamic language VM+JIT (MoarVM) instead of taking advantage of all the work the PyPy folks have done and using PyPy for Perl 6? Was PyPy even evaluated as a possible target?
People can say that as much as they like, calling the thing that comes after Perl 5 "Perl 6" certainly SOUNDS like a version number, and the reason it sounds like it's supposed to be a new version of Perl is because once upon a time it was going to be.
Maybe at the point of the 1.0 release, a naming change could take place. I think any time before then would be a mistake though, as it would maximize the baggage and minimize the usefulness of the new name. I'm torn on whether a new name, if it happened, would be better off explicitly referencing Perl (e.g. NG Perl), or leave it out entirely for something new.
My guess is that "perl6 1.something" will be followed by "perl 6.something". But that would require an enormous amount of compatibility with perl5.
Late for what, exactly? Do people no longer write code? Because if they do, some of them might might choose to use Perl 6 for that, and that's all the success a programming language can hope for. I see no reason why Perl 6 can't find its niche among people who prefer the Perlish over the Pythonic way to approach problems, but want a modern, consistent, cruft-free language (which Perl 5 is not).
Late to having a large, committed community and momentum. 15 years ago, Perl was Real Big (although I think even then PHP was starting to eat its lunch). If you launched Perl 6 then, you had a lot of active Perl projects you could talk into switching. Now, Perl 6 is Just Another Language, and it faces most of the struggles any new language/runtime would face, plus the added burden of carrying everyone's preconception…
This is not Perl 5. They are not the same language. Any whatever language you currently favor is Just Another Language that will be (or has been) displaced by [Current Fad Language]. Perl 6 hasn't even had its "Show HN: flappy bird/blog platform/etc" flavor-of-the-month phase yet, and you still claim its too late for the language? You come off as someone who does not want to expand their developer tools, because there is no reason to make the vague "claims" you have.
I'm a Perl 6 core developer (compiler, test suite, docs, design documents, infrastructure). Ask me anything :-)
Something I've wondered for a while: why was the decision made to write yet another dynamic language VM+JIT (MoarVM) instead of taking advantage of all the work the PyPy folks have done and using PyPy for Perl 6? Was PyPy even evaluated as a possible target?
Maybe at the point of the 1.0 release, a naming change could take place. I think any time before then would be a mistake though, as it would maximize the baggage and minimize the usefulness of the new name. I'm torn on whether a new name, if it happened, would be better off explicitly referencing Perl (e.g. NG Perl), or leave it out entirely for something new.
My guess is that "perl6 1.something" will be followed by "perl 6.something". But that would require an enormous amount of compatibility with perl5.
Well, with Inline::Perl5 and "use p5", that may not be entirely unfeasible. You can read more about Inline::Perl5 here[1], but the TL;DR is that it uses a Perl 5 interpreter along with Perl 6 to pass code back and forth, allowing pure perl modules and modules that interface with libraries to run fairly smoothly in Perl 6. There's also an Inline::Python that works the same way...