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Re: The Future of Perl 5

by LanX (Saint)
on Aug 18, 2018 at 14:22 UTC ( [id://1220580]=note: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??


in reply to The Future of Perl 5

I saw the talk in the stream and I have to disagree that the decline stabilized at a respectable level, because the community is aging and slowly collapsing. (Sorry for being blunt)

In my (not so humble) opinion does "Perl" need a believable long term strategy to escape it's evolutionary dead end and attract "investment".

But I don't see a strategy I only see traditional tactics.

The first (meta) things are to

  • Identify what "Perl" means
  • Who the target groups are
  • What (used to make) makes Perl great
  • Which market developments helped promoting Perl
  • How to adapt to environmental changes of the last 25 years
  • How to open up development for faster prototyping, evolution and competition of stable solutions

For instance:

  • Curtis is talking about inlined functions, what's the difference to the old syntactic macro discussion?
  • Function signatures are long overdue, but why the hack do we need to wait for a fast implementation? We could start with a slow one like shown in Function::Parameters °, stabilize the API ASAP and implement the fast version afterwards?

I know some core devs will feel insulted now (sorry!), but evolution means that obsolete features have to die.

Sorry for not spreading "Yes, we can!" slogans, positivity is not my mentality.

I prefer direct speech without meaning it as an insult.

At the same time I take funded critic without being insulted.

Cheers Rolf
(addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)
Wikisyntax for the Monastery FootballPerl is like chess, only without the dice

°) which has it's foundation in a "macro" mechanism!

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^2: The Future of Perl 5
by dave_the_m (Monsignor) on Aug 19, 2018 at 11:19 UTC
    Function signatures are long overdue, but why the hack do we need to wait for a fast implementation? We could start with a slow one like shown in Function::Parameters °, stabilize the API ASAP and implement the fast version afterwards?
    My current intention is to have *all* of that done by the time 5.30 is released.

    Dave.

      Dave that would be great, thanks! :)

      Not sure what "*all*" means, but if it includes named arguments I'm happy already!

      Cheers Rolf
      (addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)
      Wikisyntax for the Monastery FootballPerl is like chess, only without the dice

        At the very least I expect to have done named parameters, container and value aliasing, and some form of constraints.

        Dave.

Re^2: The Future of Perl 5
by Laurent_R (Canon) on Aug 18, 2018 at 17:12 UTC
    Thank you, Rolf, for your valuable comments.

    IMHO, Curtis provided neither a strategy, nor tactics, but rather tried to offer a vision. He did not try to say: to get there, we need to do this and then that. He simply said: this is where we could be in ten years from now.

    Having said that, I certainly agree with you that Perl needs a believable long term strategy.

      "believable" or achievable? I heard an interesting idea late on Friday night at dinner that seemed really good.

        "believable" or achievable?
        Yes, I get your point. The part of the sentence with the word "believable", I copied it from LanX's post. Achievable is probably more important, but I guess the strategy has to be both credible and achievable.
        Fyi, from Ovid's talk, his three self-imposed requirements for the ideas he was willing to include regarding the future of P5:

        • Achievable
        • No magic
        • Must still look like Perl
        > I heard an interesting idea late on Friday night at dinner that seemed really good.

        And where do I find the life stream? ;-)

        Cheers Rolf
        (addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)
        Wikisyntax for the Monastery FootballPerl is like chess, only without the dice

      Please don't get me wrong I'm not criticizing Curtis.

      I'm glad he gave this talk.

      You asked where Perl 5 should be in 10 years, I tried to sketch an approach to find perspectives and ways ....

      Cheers Rolf (addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)
      Wikisyntax for the Monastery FootballPerl is like chess, only without the dice

Re^2: The Future of Perl 5
by shmem (Chancellor) on Aug 19, 2018 at 15:51 UTC
    I saw the talk in the stream

    Is it available after the fact? Link?

    perl -le'print map{pack c,($-++?1:13)+ord}split//,ESEL'

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