Re^4: Basic Literacy for P6 Advocates

I don't think that joining irc, introducing himself and asking for pointers is what my boss is interested in. He's looking for a language to implement and not for a community to join. I have not looked into the documentation, but unless there is enough documentation that does not rely on Perl 5 knowledge, I think you will find it very hard because you basically exclude most of your audience:

People who don't know Perl 5 - the documentation is useless to them unless they learn Perl 5 first
People who know Perl 5 - while these people could use the documentation, Perl 6 has burned lots of goodwill and interest in the last 12 years

You seem to be trying to work on the second audience, people who already know Perl 5, and I don't know the efforts to address people who don't already know Perl 5, but at least my second-hand perception is that there is simply no attempt to explain Perl 6 stand-alone.

Comment on Re^4: Basic Literacy for P6 Advocates

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Re^5: Basic Literacy for P6 Advocates by raiph (Deacon) on Aug 06, 2013 at 10:19 UTC
Perl 6 is not ready for general consumption. It's not ready for your boss. There's been little incentive to produce documentation for him because the rest of the product isn't ready for him. The main audience I'm trying to reach is potential contributors. P6 is a friendly project. Larry hangs out there. You can hack the compiler with nothing but Perl skills. As TheDamian says, it's an extraordinary language. Morale is high and excitement is building. It ought to be attractive to some monks, notwithstanding a decade of disappointment. the celebrity tell-all of the Perl-6 cult	[reply]
Re^6: Basic Literacy for P6 Advocates by Corion (Patriarch) on Aug 06, 2013 at 10:34 UTC
Ah, I think I didn't formulate this as understandable as possible. My boss was looking for a language he could implement, as a hobby project. In so far, the incentive would have been there to gain somebody as contributor who has written more than one compiler. But I understand that explaining Perl to non-Perl outsiders is complicated. You can hack the compiler with nothing but Perl skills. This basically says to me "if you don't know Perl 5, you can't play". This may be the spin you want to give to things on a Perl website, but it does not really help in attracting people who don't already know/like Perl 5. If you wanted to say "You can hack the compiler with nothing but Perl 6 skills", please refer to my post about my perception of the Perl 6 documentation and its suitability for people who don't know Perl 5 already.	[reply]
Re^7: Basic Literacy for P6 Advocates by raiph (Deacon) on Aug 06, 2013 at 11:33 UTC
Implementing a P6 compiler is a colossal undertaking. Your boss was saved by the bad doc. :) Aiui p6doc, Carl's "programming fundamentals" and "an adventure game", and maybe Gabor's "Starting again with Rakudo Perl 6" do not assume P5 knowledge. But really, if you want to get in to P6 at the moment you pretty much have to be willing to join the IRC channel. We have some pythonistas now hacking the P6 core. They somehow got up to speed... the celebrity tell-all of the Perl-6 cult	[reply]


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