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Is Perl 6 Being Renamed?

blogs.perl.org

301–310 of 424 posts

Re: Is Perl 6 Being Renamed?

#301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you insist on a language that is Perl-like but also modern Here's your perennial reminder that the word "modern" is a thought smell. > it's a language with a small ecosystem that doesn't seem to provide any groundbreaking advantage compared to existing languages I'd almost prefer this conception went uncorrected, because Perl6 is not just Ruby or Python in different clothes, and it's not just Perl5 with nicer ae…

Sorry, what is a "thought smell?" Not familiar with the term and can't find it elsewhere.

[deleted]

Re: Is Perl 6 Being Renamed?

#302
I think this is a great idea that is two decades too late. Many people say that python killed perl, and that is true for those who disliked perl. However, I think perl 6 killed perl for those who liked it, or could have liked it if they learned it. The knowledge that there was a new version on the way that would have all power of perl, but fixed many of its problems took the wind out of perl's sail, especially once it became clear how different it was going to be. Why invest time into learning perl 5, when perl 6 was just around the corner? How do I defend my use of perl 5 in production, when its own creators have moved on? Best to just concede the battle, and regroup for the war when perl 6 is ready ... and then it never was.

I really think that both languages would be stronger today if Larry Wall et. al. had "marketed" perl 6 as a research sandbox for new ideas for language design, and then depending on where those ideas led them, pronounced it as either a successor to perl, or a new language when it was closer to ready.

Re: Is Perl 6 Being Renamed?

#303

To my mind, the blockers for Perl 6 adoption in order of importance have been: 1. The name, saddling it with the legacy of Perl. (I say this as someone who really liked working with Perl back in the waning years of the old millennium, and believes that Perl was visionary in pointing the way to the state of modern programming... but also that it had some limitations that have only become more glaring over the years.)…

As a relative old-timer, I agree with your 1st point - when I think of Perl, I think of cryptic, ridiculously terse syntax. OTOH, "Perl" has existed forever... it would be kind of a shame to lose the name.

It is not lost, Perl 5 is still developed.

Re: Is Perl 6 Being Renamed?

#304
post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That announced that it could be used as a second name, but provided no further guidance, so Perl 6 is still used by many thus its problems are still just as present. This proposal would be to actually consistently use Raku as the name of the language.

Wouldn't it have made more sense to hold off on the first announcement until there was consensus on a single new name, instead of having two or three inconsistent namesoperating simultaneously for a year? Neither of which might be the final one?

A lot of things would have made more sense in hindsight, but it's not where the community was at the time, and ultimately Larry said no to a straight rename. He is taking less of a role now so it can be revisited.

Re: Is Perl 6 Being Renamed?

#305
post #70

Routinely 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 just another Perl hacker, your "not real Perl" made me laugh. And no, let me reassure you that that snippet of line-noise is not, in fact, syntactically valid Perl after all. ...you have to transpose a couple of characters for that: cat nocarrier.pl !$#foo->_%[] perl -c nocarrier.pl nocarrier.pl syntax OK (And yes, that genuinely does make me love Perl a tiny bit more. I guess you and I are just different that way…

$ perl6 -e '!$#foo->_%[]'

===SORRY!=== Error while compiling -e

Unsupported use of $#foo variable; in Perl 6 please use @foo.end

at -e:1

------> !$#foo⏏->_%[]

Re: Is Perl 6 Being Renamed?

#306

To my mind, the blockers for Perl 6 adoption in order of importance have been: 1. The name, saddling it with the legacy of Perl. (I say this as someone who really liked working with Perl back in the waning years of the old millennium, and believes that Perl was visionary in pointing the way to the state of modern programming... but also that it had some limitations that have only become more glaring over the years.)…

As a relative old-timer, I agree with your 1st point - when I think of Perl, I think of cryptic, ridiculously terse syntax. OTOH, "Perl" has existed forever... it would be kind of a shame to lose the name.

its okay, I’m fairly certain that there exists Perl 5 code that will outlast our very species

Re: Is Perl 6 Being Renamed?

#307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But installing one was the big issue, as it would always choose the latest release of any module in the dependency chain, including the perl interpreter itself. You are mistaken. No cpan client is capable of upgrading perl itself. If a cpan module declares a dependency on a perl version later than what you are currently running, the installation simply fails (as what would happen if there is a dependency declaratio…

This is true now, but was not true many years ago.

To put some numbers in this thread, it was fixed in CPAN.pm version 1.90 in 2007, which first came with Perls 5.8.9 and 5.10.0 (but can be updated on older Perls).

Re: Is Perl 6 Being Renamed?

#308
post #34
post #4

Perl 6 is probably a great language, I'm not very interested in it, for the reasons someone might pick it, I'd probably pick a different language; of course not for any logical reasons, but still. Perl 5 on the other hand is still a great language for lots of reasons. I hope Perl 6 is renamed and Perl 5 will become Perl again and it will be reinvigorated and more people will consider it again. Don't get me wrong, I d…

> Perl 6 is probably a great language, Does it also have the unparseability problem[0] of Perl 5? That's a deal breaker for a lot of tooling. [0] https://perlmonks.org/?node_id=663393

It's real old and out of date now, but the STD grammar of Perl 6 was written in Perl 6 ahead of time and the Pugs implementation worked against it https://github.com/perl6/std/blob/master/STD.pm6

Rakudo (the current major Perl 6 compiler) also uses grammars to actually parse Perl 6 programs, but from the bootstrap language NQP https://github.com/rakudo/rakudo/blob/master/src/Perl6/Gramm...

Re: Is Perl 6 Being Renamed?

#310
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you had to ask, I'm guessing you don't use it either.

I don't use it yet , either. Why are you trying to make it sound like a new language needs instant adoption, or it's dead for all time? It's not going to expire if it takes a few years. There are two programming languages that I learned in their first 5 years. They both ended up being languages I dislike. A language that takes time to mature and isn't the pop language of the week sounds terrific to me. Good languages…

Well you can take a look fairly easily with this https://perl6intro.com/ and this https://glot.io/new/perl6

If you want to be fancy you can run the JS implementation of the Rakudo compiler in browser targeting JS https://perl6.github.io/6pad/#b66f6f0eb46f296b8a285c45a152f1...

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