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Perl 6 developers will attempt to make a Version 1.0 release by Christmas 2015

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Re: Perl 6 developers will attempt to make a Version 1.0 release by Christmas 2015

#51

Post by kbenson »

RichardCA wrote: post #47
perlgeek wrote: post #40

I'm a Perl 6 core developer (compiler, test suite, docs, design documents, infrastructure). Ask me anything :-)

I don't see anywhere where it says the project is getting behind MoarVM, and this will be the official runtime that ships. Is this in fact the case?

Perl 6 is a spec, and different implementations are possible and encouraged. Rakudo is an implementation, and targets a few different VMs, including Parrot, MoarVM and the JVM. A lot of effort is being put into making MoarVM a good VM for the intermediate language that Rakudo uses to implement Perl 6, but AFAIK the JVM is kept up to date as well, and Parrot is also where time and expertise exist.

Re: Perl 6 developers will attempt to make a Version 1.0 release by Christmas 2015

#53

Post by chromatic »

kbenson wrote: post #33
chromatic wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

some people would rather ... complain from the peanut gallery than they would help it move forward. That's not entirely fair. Some of us doubters spent a lot of time, energy, and resources trying to help it move forward before deciding it wasn't worth it.

Have you been checking it out at all again, or are you considering it? It's been my secret hope for a long time that you would get involved again, if not at the compiler level then at the community and ecosystem level. Your blog[1] was always insightful and a good read, and I think the community is worse without it being active. I'm talking about Perl 6 here, but I could say the same for Perl 5 and it would be at lea…

Have you been checking it out at all again, or are you considering it?

No. I have my doubts about yet another announcement and nothing I've seen since I stopped contributing suggests that the project will provide anything I need that I can't get better elsewhere.

Re: Perl 6 developers will attempt to make a Version 1.0 release by Christmas 2015

#54

Post by chromatic »

pekk wrote: post #35
chromatic wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

some people would rather ... complain from the peanut gallery than they would help it move forward. That's not entirely fair. Some of us doubters spent a lot of time, energy, and resources trying to help it move forward before deciding it wasn't worth it.

I'm interested in why you removed "stagnate and die" from that quote. The problem I described is when people actually prefer to kill a project through stagnation than to help it move forward - often by active resistance to any real change. Living projects periodically change. Even goals like improving speed often require redesigns and replacements of old components. When the process of change and renewal is shut down…

I'm interested in why you removed "stagnate and die" from that quote.

I have strong opinions that people in situations similar to mine had no intent of contributing to "stagnation" or "death". Quite the opposite.

When the process of change and renewal is shut down or nobody contributes to it, everyone starts wandering off and the project dies.

Certainly. I also think that a project which actively chases away contributors ought to account for that eventually.

Re: Perl 6 developers will attempt to make a Version 1.0 release by Christmas 2015

#55

Post by pmontra »

DonHopkins wrote: post #16
mfrager wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better in this case is purely a value judgement... The Perl language is very elegant and powerful, that's why most of the other languages were modeled on it. Perl is a language that is still ahead of its time. Also, Perl's library system, CPAN, is far more comprehensive than many languages. By the way, Python is a great language, except for all the tabbing nonsense.

>"most of the other languages were modeled on it." Having a regexp library is hardly "modeling a language on Perl". "Most" of exactly WHICH languages are you claiming were modeled on Perl? >Perl is a language that is still ahead of its time. Perl's time was 15 years ago. >"Also, Perl's library system, CPAN, is far more comprehensive than many languages." A library and a language are apples and oranges. Python's libra…

There could be a misunderstanding. The editor indents the code and keeps it indented properly whatever it happens, not the programmer. I don't have to worry about which indentation level is the right one for the code I'm writing and the bugs I'll create if I get it wrong. I press tab and emacs places it where it must go, if it's not already there, which is the case unless I'm doing copy and paste. At least this is my experience with languages that have block delimiters.

Re: Perl 6 developers will attempt to make a Version 1.0 release by Christmas 2015

#56

Post by chromatic »

kamaal wrote: post #43
chromatic wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern scripting languages with... parametric polymorphism, built-in parallelism/concurrency, grammars, constraint-based multiple dispatch, etc.? Not everyone thinks that ticking off a list of feature checkboxes satisfies the most important adoption criteria.

True, but at the same time If I'm writing a code base that will likely have a >5 year life. I'd rather write it in a feature rich backwards compatible language. Else you are left with a Python 3 like scenario where you will have to undergo a decade plus migration path just to get a few improvements over a for loop and a print statement.

If I'm writing a code base that will likely have a >5 year life

... then don't write it in a language with negligible documentation, negligible tooling, barely-there library support, nearly zero users, and a roadmap based on the promise that, after almost fifteen years of working on the "It'll be ready when it's ready!" principle, sufficient volunteer mindset will change to "Let's ship a production-ready release to meet a hard deadline!"

Re: Perl 6 developers will attempt to make a Version 1.0 release by Christmas 2015

#57

Post by RichardCA »

kbenson wrote: post #51
RichardCA wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see anywhere where it says the project is getting behind MoarVM, and this will be the official runtime that ships. Is this in fact the case?

Perl 6 is a spec, and different implementations are possible and encouraged. Rakudo is an implementation, and targets a few different VMs, including Parrot, MoarVM and the JVM. A lot of effort is being put into making MoarVM a good VM for the intermediate language that Rakudo uses to implement Perl 6, but AFAIK the JVM is kept up to date as well, and Parrot is also where time and expertise exist.

Thanks, my intention in asking the question was to see if there is any willingness to speak about what will ship. I don't need a pedantic explanation of the runtimes, I want to know if a decision has been made to get behind one of them. I've been waiting 15 years to hear some actual details about what I can expect when I install this thing.

Re: Perl 6 developers will attempt to make a Version 1.0 release by Christmas 2015

#58

Post by brrt »

xiaq wrote: post #46
perlgeek wrote: post #40

I'm a Perl 6 core developer (compiler, test suite, docs, design documents, infrastructure). Ask me anything :-)

IIRC the new VM (MoarVM) is around for quite a short time and it replaced Parrot in a dramatically short time. What are the advantages of MoarVM over Parrot and why were we stuck at Parrot for so long before giving it up?

I'm the developer of the MoarVM JIT (but not the developer of the MoarVM bytecode specialisation framework, which is typically seen as part of the JIT).

The weakness of Parrot VM was it's ambition - to be an efficient VM for all dynamic languages. This may have seemed possible in the past but recent work (i.e. v8, luajit2, etc) has invalidated that; it's much better (and much easier) to build a VM for a specific target than for all possible targets, as there are simply fewer points where you need abstraction. (For instance, NaN is false in javascript boolean context, but not in Perl6). More importantly, MoarVM has been designed and developed by a small set of developers applying all the lessons learned from parrot, while parrot was in many ways an experiment by committee.

Re: Perl 6 developers will attempt to make a Version 1.0 release by Christmas 2015

#59

Post by Estragon »

muraiki wrote: post #7

If you want to have an idea of what makes Perl 6 compelling, check these slides that were submitted a few days ago, "Perl 6 for Mere Mortals" (which is also another talk at FOSDEM): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8953368 I hate to repeat a comment of mine, but for the sake of emphasizing just how different Perl 6 is, here's a version of Fibonacci in Perl 6: subset NonNegativeInt of Int where * >= 0; proto fib (…

Why would I learn this rather than Haskell?

Re: Perl 6 developers will attempt to make a Version 1.0 release by Christmas 2015

#60

Post by brrt »

chromatic wrote: post #54
pekk wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm interested in why you removed "stagnate and die" from that quote. The problem I described is when people actually prefer to kill a project through stagnation than to help it move forward - often by active resistance to any real change. Living projects periodically change. Even goals like improving speed often require redesigns and replacements of old components. When the process of change and renewal is shut down…

I'm interested in why you removed "stagnate and die" from that quote. I have strong opinions that people in situations similar to mine had no intent of contributing to "stagnation" or "death". Quite the opposite. When the process of change and renewal is shut down or nobody contributes to it, everyone starts wandering off and the project dies. Certainly. I also think that a project which actively chases away contribu…

I think that the perl6 project is quite welcoming of contributors. So I'm honestly curious to know what happened to make you feel otherwise.
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