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A Complete Course of the Raku programming language

course.raku.org

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Re: A Complete Course of the Raku programming language

#41

Post by youdontlisten »

Look, Larry, give it up, OK? Nobody is going to use Perl 6. There are a million other languages out there these days. What does your language do that is in any way special or unique? Nothing.

Needless to say, the name Perl has little cachet or relevance today, thus explaining the name change. Lipstick on a pig.

At this point, if a supposed 'alternative' can't replace the C language, I want nothing to do with it. We need to get back to the hardware. No, Go doesn't cut it, and (laugh track deafening) I'm not interested in Rust, either.

I think the very idea of a VM language, while a cool and fun toy back in the early 2000s, is losing its relevance, at least for the moment. Source code portability is much better than binary portability.

Re: A Complete Course of the Raku programming language

#42

Post by pvorb »

thesuperbigfrog wrote: post #13
qsort wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Perl/Raku widely used these days? Are they worth learning? I've always been curious about those languages but I've had the impression that people are moving away from them.

Learning Perl is worthwhile because it is ubiquitous on Unix-like systems and Perl-compatible regular expressions are the defacto standard regular expression syntax. Perl may not be as popular now as it was in the past, but it is still around and lots of legacy systems that were written in Perl are still in active use.

But as Perl-compatible regular expressions are available in many other languages, this is not really a reason for learning Perl itself, right? Or am I missing some deeper insight into regexes, because I don't know Perl?

Re: A Complete Course of the Raku programming language

#43

Post by bmn__ »

amelius wrote: post #36

My first question whenever a new programming language comes up: does it solve the problem of "what color is your function"? [1] [1] https://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2015/02/01/what-color-is-...

Yes, unlike the languages mentioned in TFA, it just works. Specifically, you can `await` anywhere without the requirement of declaring the surrounding context as async which in practice means you eliminate the red/blue distinction.

Re: A Complete Course of the Raku programming language

#44

Post by aeturnum »

This language looks cool! I also really like the page-by-page format for the tutorial, which strikes exactly the right balance (for me) between giving too little and too much info.

As a side note, I noticed that the "Notes on using Unicode" page[1] referred to the quotation marks used in kanji-based languages[2] as "fancy." I think this kind of exotification of non-western cultures (where mundane things become exciting or "fancy" because it's not from your culture) can be a kind of cultural "code smell" that warns off non-western developers. Even if it comes from a humorous or enthusiastic place, an outsider just sees someone getting weirdly excited about a normal thing.

[1] https://course.raku.org/essentials/on-unicode/

[2] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E3%80%8C_%E3%80%8D

Re: A Complete Course of the Raku programming language

#45

Post by megameter »

qsort wrote: post #6
easygenes wrote: post #2

Sadly only first part is complete. Raku is the much more functionally inspired new Perl. It’s the renaming of Perl 6 and means “camel” or “paradise” in Japanese.

Is Perl/Raku widely used these days? Are they worth learning? I've always been curious about those languages but I've had the impression that people are moving away from them.

Raku is crammed with enough good, original ideas about programming languages that I would compare it to the "learning Lisp" meme in that it will probably reveal something new to you.

But as for usage, it's mostly legacy Perl codebases, which are much less interesting - Python and Ruby basically cover the same bases.

Re: A Complete Course of the Raku programming language

#47

Post by huhtenberg »

Is there a one-page version of this? Or at least with support for ← and → keys for page navigation.

It's basically impossible to skim this course or to jump around it quickly.

Edit - here's a GreaseMonkey script for the arrow navigation between the pages. Right arrow - next page, Left arrow - previous page. https://pastebin.com/uQMWyfq0

Re: A Complete Course of the Raku programming language

#48

Post by richardwhiuk »

amelius wrote: post #36

My first question whenever a new programming language comes up: does it solve the problem of "what color is your function"? [1] [1] https://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2015/02/01/what-color-is-...

I think Java does have coloured functions. It's just that the colours are "fast" and "slow" - i.e. functions which will block the thread for a long time and those which don't.

You can't call "functions that may block for a long time" from a UI thread. Java doesn't have async, so you have to punt them to a background thread manually.

Re: A Complete Course of the Raku programming language

#49

Post by giancarlostoro »

qalmakka wrote: post #8

I'm so glad they renamed Perl 6, having it dangling for decades like a Sword of Damocles hurt Perl more than anything else could. At least both languages are now able to progress in their separated ways, and I must say Raku is a really pleasant language, and a joy to use.

I'm going to butcher my question so my apologies, I've heard Perl described as a sort of linguist / grammatical type of language, where you can solve the same problem using multiple approaches and syntax. Is this something Raku is drifting from or embracing? I think Raku is kind of interesting and I did try it out a few times whilst it was called Perl 6, but I'm not sure what its niche is. I mostly do Python for professional projects but don't mind experimenting with other languages.

I guess what I'm trying to ask is what are the major fundamental differences between the two languages? Features aside, although if some features are part of the answer thats fine.

Re: A Complete Course of the Raku programming language

#50

Post by donaldihunter »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #49
qalmakka wrote: post #8

I'm so glad they renamed Perl 6, having it dangling for decades like a Sword of Damocles hurt Perl more than anything else could. At least both languages are now able to progress in their separated ways, and I must say Raku is a really pleasant language, and a joy to use.

I'm going to butcher my question so my apologies, I've heard Perl described as a sort of linguist / grammatical type of language, where you can solve the same problem using multiple approaches and syntax. Is this something Raku is drifting from or embracing? I think Raku is kind of interesting and I did try it out a few times whilst it was called Perl 6, but I'm not sure what its niche is. I mostly do Python for prof…

Raku definitely embraces multiple approaches and syntax, continuing the “There is more than one way to do it” motto of Perl. In addition, Raku aims for consistency and composability while introducing new language constructs like laziness, gather/take, async/await, hyper operators, grammars and more.
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