in reply to Is Haskell always going to be needed for Perl6 compilation?

Maybe, and I say, maybe, there will be a version of Perl6 that is finally written in Perl6. But I doubt that. More likely in my opinion, Perl6 development will stay for a long time in Haskell, with an ANSI C file compiled from it to jump-start Perl6 on foreign platforms where no Haskell is available.

With moving from Haskell to Perl6 itself, P6p would give up the huge potential/mindshare/manpower of academical students that develop in Haskell and have fresh research ideas, and also the type safety/type checking of Haskell. On the other hand, having Perl6 written in Perl6 allows the language to be developed much quicker and lowers the barrier of entry that is currently C and later will be Haskell.

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Re^2: Is Haskell always going to be needed for Perl6 compilation?
by chromatic (Archbishop) on Apr 09, 2005 at 18:29 UTC
    Maybe, and I say, maybe, there will be a version of Perl6 that is finally written in Perl6. But I doubt that.

    Why such doubt? Bootstrapping is common in compilers. GHC does it, for example.

[reply]

      Inertia and momentum - at least currently, Pugs-on-Haskell has all the momentum, and Perl 6 development has shown a lot of inertia. Of course, maybe some time somebody starts a topaz-like effort to implement Perl6 in itself; and this time, it's much more likely to succeed, as Perl6 has enough power to become self-sustaining (unlike Perl5), and can maybe even have a straight first machine-generated translation from Haskell. But I don't see that this will inevitably succeed, while I see the success of Pugs/Haskell immediately.

[reply]
        Perl 6 development has shown a lot of inertia
        Since "inertia" means both "things at rest tend to stay at rest", and "things going quickly tend to remain going quickly", what exactly did you mean by this statement?

        Are you saying "Perl6 development is unstoppable!"?

        -- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker
        Be sure to read my standard disclaimer if this is a reply.

[reply]

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