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What Happened to Perl 7?

blogs.perl.org

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Re: What Happened to Perl 7?

#231

Post by runevault »

jlg23 wrote: post #230
runevault wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true. The downside is that a couple days of not worrying about the understandability of your code can lead to a spiral that quickly gets out of control. Plus it makes expanding a dev team significantly harder since you really need people all on the same page of what readability means. Yes you can do things like coding standards, but the more free form the language the tougher such standards are. That doesn't…

Is there any branch of engineering where "a couple days of not worrying" does not have the potential to be "lead to a spiral that quickly gets out of control"?

Languages with tooling that will yell at you if you are sloppy make it harder to get too out of hand. Part of why I've started learning rust is between the compiler and the linter I'm forced to ask if I'm being sloppy or not.

Re: What Happened to Perl 7?

#232

Post by dinom »

petre wrote: post #186
dinom wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hesitate to say "they're bikeshedding" since triviality can be highly subjective. For me, backward compatibility and a smooth, discretionary upgrade path is greatly preferred to trends in language popularity. Therefore, I appreciate the extra deliberation they seem to be taking. Of course other people have different preferences. To suggest they're bikeshedding implies there's some bigger problems being ignored. Can…

> Can you elaborate on what those may be? Read rurban's comment below.

I see. Still, somehow I don't think trying to crow-bar "Perl11" onto machines against end user wishes is the right approach. There could be a backlash.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: What Happened to Perl 7?

#233

Post by jhbadger »

viraptor wrote: post #22
badsectoracula wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The larger problem is the versions. This basically requires someone to update their script headers all the time if they want to keep getting new features. Probably not much of a problem currently, but might be if releases get more frequent. But to use that new feature they'd need to modify their code anyway, so this isn't really an issue in practice, is it? > I personally like the “edition” concept of Rust a lot be…

For all the buzz about python3 fiasco, we're pretty much migrated now and py2 gets dropped from supported versions and system repositories. Perl devs would be in a better situation with a "fiasco" like that. Ruby went through its own big breaking changes at least 2 times before as well. So... if people have good reasons to stay, a big change won't drive them away.

Yes, but in some domains (for example bioinformatics) py2 is still a requirement for many packages. It really hasn't gone away. Ruby was far more elegant in its upgrades and nearly everyone upgraded their packages because the needed changes were far more minor. I have code from ruby 1.8.7 that still works with ruby 3.x.

Re: What Happened to Perl 7?

#235

Post by avgcorrection »

badsectoracula wrote: post #15
codeflo wrote: post #11

I’ve written a nontrivial anount of Perl code in my life, admittedly almost none in the last decade. For all its obvious flaws, I always liked the language, and am happy to see it getting attention and moving forward. Having said that, I think this might be too fine-grained. First, opting in to an experimental feature could be a one-liner, “use experimental feature ‘try’” or similar. There’s no point in punishing you…

> The larger problem is the versions. This basically requires someone to update their script headers all the time if they want to keep getting new features. Probably not much of a problem currently, but might be if releases get more frequent. But to use that new feature they'd need to modify their code anyway, so this isn't really an issue in practice, is it? > I personally like the “edition” concept of Rust a lot be…

> How is this any different from having a repeat of the python2->python3 fiasco

A 2018 edition project (declared in the project config) is pinned to that version forever. You would have to switch to a new edition explicitly.

Well that was easy.

Re: What Happened to Perl 7?

#236

Post by ThinkBeat »

chrisseaton wrote: post #173
rootusrootus wrote: post #121

I still remember a wonderful presentation by Damian Conway a number of years ago about all of the great ways Perl 6 could turn into whatever domain specific language you needed it to be. It was beautiful, I was awestruck. I've always enjoyed Perl as a language . But I walked out of that presentation thinking "That was so beautiful, and I don't want it anywhere near my business." Because the last thing I need is softw…

I think Perl fell victim to a huge change of fashion around the 2000s. 'There's more than one way to do it' and the whimsical, deliberately slightly obtuse design of Perl used to be what people valued. Then something happened (perhaps it was how people started building much larger apps in 'scripting' languages, to use an out-dated term) and I think to most people under 35 deliberately having 'more than one way to do…

C# keeps accumulating "more than one way to do it with every (too frequent) update.

A guy who is an expert lets say C# 2.0, would have no way to just read code for C# 9 that took advantage of new features and syntax.

It can be procedural, object oriented, functional, in a limited way aspect oriented, it can be data oriented in a way and all of those at the same time.

Re: What Happened to Perl 7?

#238

Post by goto11 »

autoexec wrote: post #208
goto11 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perl is a great language if you are a single developer. I think there is some "reverse network effect" for Perl, where people might enjoy writing in the language but nobody enjoys having to maintain Perl written by someone else. So basically you don't encourage others to use it.

> I think there is some "reverse network effect" for Perl, where people might enjoy writing in the language but nobody enjoys having to maintain Perl written by someone else. I think you might be right. Perl is a lot of fun to write, and it's still my language of choice for log parsing and automating sys admin stuff, but while it's possible to write Perl in a way that's easy for others to maintain and understand most…

> Actually... now that I think about it, is it ever a joy to work with someone else's mess in any language?

Not really, but not every language is equal. Wen developing for my own sake, I enjoy Scheme or Haskell, but I would rather maintain code written in C#.

Re: What Happened to Perl 7?

#239

Post by dale_glass »

atweiden wrote: post #225

I’m disappointed in the way this Perl 6 v Perl 7 debate is developing. Perl 6 modernizes Perl with e.g. concurrent and reactive programming, built-in grammars and a reimagined regex syntax superior to legacy PCRE, named function arguments, and gradual typing. Perl 6 was designed to be the successor language to Perl 5. The only technical grounds for Perl 6 being metaphorically sidelined was because Perl 6 lacked the s…

I think more than anything it was an error in the messaging.

Perl 6 was treated as the successor of Perl 5 -- and that was the mistake. It meant Perl 5 started dying, since people assumed that Perl 5 would be soon dead, and Perl 6 had a new different syntax. And then it took 15 years to happen, during which Python and others ate its lunch.

I think a more successful strategy would have been to make it clear very early on that Perl 6 would be some sort of long term experimental project, and that Perl 5 would be expected to be a thing for a long time still.

If in 2015 Perl 5 still had a thriving ecosystem, and there was a demand of Perl-like but better, then Perl 6 could have been more successful. But in the current timeline it's a successor to an almost defunct language, and isn't such an attractive proposition.

Re: What Happened to Perl 7?

#240

Post by agumonkey »

chrisseaton wrote: post #173
rootusrootus wrote: post #121

I still remember a wonderful presentation by Damian Conway a number of years ago about all of the great ways Perl 6 could turn into whatever domain specific language you needed it to be. It was beautiful, I was awestruck. I've always enjoyed Perl as a language . But I walked out of that presentation thinking "That was so beautiful, and I don't want it anywhere near my business." Because the last thing I need is softw…

I think Perl fell victim to a huge change of fashion around the 2000s. 'There's more than one way to do it' and the whimsical, deliberately slightly obtuse design of Perl used to be what people valued. Then something happened (perhaps it was how people started building much larger apps in 'scripting' languages, to use an out-dated term) and I think to most people under 35 deliberately having 'more than one way to do…

Interesting question, maybe computing was still a wildlife space to explore and 'more than one way' was felt like a challenge in creativity.. then the field decided it had to become industrial (the term that comes to mind thinking about all the professors talking about UML, diagrams, build swap-in packages like ICs) and suddenly, standardization is the only way.
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