Re^9: The Future of Perl 5
by woolfy (Chaplain) on Aug 27, 2018 at 10:35 UTC
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Liz, if BrowserUK is right, when he makes a list of harmful things you did, and people agree with that list, we should return that silly award we got, and stop doing any marketing for either Perl 6 or Perl 5, and finally have a quiet life. If the community agrees with BrowserUK, I would stop caring about the community. I know, sofar, the community in general seems to like what we do, but that could just be fear and intimidation. Let's await what BrowserUK comes up with. We must be evil people, having done horrendous acts on betrayal and destruction to Perl. I am curious. | [reply] [Watch: Dir/Any] |
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Here's my thoughts on the matter…
Perl 6 is an amazing language. The implementation and libraries available so far still have a lot of room for improvement, but they've come a long way from where they were a few years ago.
The Perl 5 porters have been doing a fantastic job of keeping Perl 5 secure, usable, and relevant over the last few years through bug fixes and incremental improvements to the language. (Refaliasing and sub signatures are two huge recent wins.) If Perl 5 had been allowed to stagnate and die while Perl 6 was being prepared, Perl 6 would have nothing to inherit.
But Perl 5 won't still be relevant or interesting in a hundred years' time; Perl 6 just might be. If Perl wants to remain relevant in the long term, Perl 6 is necessary. In the short term, having a not-quite-ready interpreter branded as the successor for Perl 5 does seem like it may have done some damage to Perl's marketability, but in the long term, the Perl 6 effort is necessary for Perl's survival.
(Some would argue that Perl 6 isn't Perlish enough, and what survives from this won't really be Perl. But from my own experiements, Perl 6 mostly seems to add stuff to Perl. It takes very little away, and that which it does take away is stuff I won't miss. (Formats?) There are a few annoying fairly gratuitous syntax changes (the method invocation operator and changes to sigils spring to mind) but you can get used to those fairly quickly. With the exception of those annoying syntax changes, if you eschew the new features, it is possible to write a very Perl5ish dialect of Perl 6.)
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I agree so far, but
> In the short term, having a not-quite-ready interpreter branded as the successor for Perl 5 does seem like it may have done some damage to Perl's marketability, but in the long term, the Perl 6 effort is necessary for Perl's survival.
This could have easily been solved by branding "Perl 6" something like "Perl++"*
A classic example of Osborning.
(DISCLAIMER: This is no excuse whatsoever for Perl6 bashing!)
*) I was told in Riga/2011 that it's too late to rename. Just imagine ...
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The community does not agree with him at all. The PERL6 HAS KILLED US ALL!!! crowd has a few vocal members but it’s a minority view and it’s not worth arguing against in this particular case.
I am grateful for anyone who has contributed to Perl; and prominent contributors like you and Liz especially. Please remember.
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The community does not agree with him at all
+1
Dave.
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