Look, it just seems to me that every one of these threads, here and elsewhere, seems to start with someone who's been using Perl for some length of time getting curious about Perl 6. They look around, google about, reading what they can find on perl6.org, and come away confused as to what it is and (oh my goodness) when it will be done.

So they post some question about Perl 6 and then they (and all else reading the thread) get to read explanations like "it's a spec, not an implementation", "we're trying to get away from the concept of finished/not-finished", "people asking about the status of Perl 6 is a distraction" and my favorite, to the effect that "the specification is not complete and probably never will be because that's not the goal".

I, like a lot of reasonable and knowledgeable persons, read this and think, Huh? I'm not saying any of the above is wrong, but can you see at all how so many postings regarding Perl 6 re completion|release dates|features can be a little hard to grok?

I've used Perl for 12 years and continue to find it useful. I use all manner of advanced techniques, have written some well-received, hopefully helpful replies here and elsewhere, document my code, used to read the Perl Journal and Perl Review regularly, have greedily sucked down all the DeveloperWorks articles, always check to see if there's a new article on perl.com, have been to conferences, and even managed to get all the way through Higher Order Perl without my head exploding. While I don't consider myself an expert, I think I know a thing or two about Perl.

And yet I am baffled by the replies from the Perl 6 crowd. Really. Baffled. Not whining because it doesn't fit my sensibilities, nor simply annoyed enough to write a trolling reply, but truly baffled. Reading the journal entry by patrick, linked above, I found myself reacting rather strongly. I shan't repeat my comments as it might have been an over-reaction, but it all just seems so odd and impenetrable.

I don't know if I'm making my point very well, but I didn't want to appear to be ignoring your reply. Back to work for me...

marmot

In reply to Re^3: Will Perl 6 Replace Perl 5? by furry_marmot
in thread Will Perl 6 Replace Perl 5? by aecooper

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