Sure things took longer than expected, but I get the impression that the general populace view this as "unacceptable" or "bad" or a sign that perl6 is doomed or something. Haven't people heard that old saying about how battle plans never survive first contact with the enemy?
The way I look at it is this: we made a plan and while executing that plan we needed to make a slight course adjustment and then again and again as more of the reality of the process unfolded and continues to unfold. This is a good thing as long as we don't lose sight of the goal (I don't think of the people doing the work have lost sight of the goal). What boggles my mind though is people who think we should have already arrived at our goal of perl6. It's still being designed! Even completely specified, fully funded projects take too long and go overbudget and they expect a minimally funded and partially specified project to be completed based on initial estimates?
I'm starting to feel a rant rise in me now, so I think I'll stop :-) But I get a general feel that Perl6's detractors all suffer from "can't you just ..." syndrome. See Andy Lester's weblog.
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This isn't a a battle plan, and there is no enemy. :) I bet a lot of people haven't heard that metaphor either (well, at least it's a metaphor in this area of my life, whereas in my other life it's literal :). Even then, it's been a long time since initial contact and we still don't know what's going on.
Sure, things change and they don't turn out as people expect. The problem comes in when you downplay or ignore the valid observations of people who wonder what's going on. When Perl 6 started, we thought we'd have it in a couple of years. Maybe three. It's been a lot longer than that, and many people have joined, and left, the project.
This isn't a "Can't you just..." problem, because I don't see anyone saying that. I don't see anyone suggesting magic bullets, cure-alls, or anything of the sort. I do hear a lot of people simply asking "When?"
A lot of the problem is the unwillingness for some people to admit that Perl 6 is taking much longer than anyone expected. They try to invalidate anyone who points that out. It makes it look like they live in as much of a fantasyland as the project managers they like to make fun of.
If you want to complain about minimal funding, that's fine, but then you have to ask yourself if the open source volunteerism model can work. You'll have to answer "Of course it works" because many other big projects use it. Why isn't it working here? Partial specs, poor management, worker churn, etc are things that those involved should acknowledge though. Reasonable people see the problems and know that they're there. Comments like yours seem to want to pretend that they don't exist. That just irritates people more.
If we're still designing Perl 6, we're in pretty bad shape. Without Pugs, I think there would be no hope.
Reasonable people can accept quite a bit when they know you're being honest with them (and yourself).
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Reasonable people see the problems and know that they're there. Comments like yours seem to want to pretend that they don't exist.
No,no,no. I recognize that there are problems and, in fact, I expected there to be problems. I guess I don't see why other people didn't expect the same. Though I've never really participated in large projects to the extent of a Dan or a Larry, I've watched enough of them to realize that certain problems are inevitable. And the odds of some non-problems becoming problems increase with time.
WRT, "Can't you just...", I actually haven't heard anyone say that either, but many times when discussing perl6 with people that's the impression I get. Their complaints seem to say "can't you just tweak perl5 a little bit to get perl6?" (Perhaps that's a "marketing issue" though. People seem to expect the innards of version N of a product to not change substantially from version N-1; just that new features are added. With perl6, everything changes but the spirit of perl)
If we're still designing Perl 6, we're in pretty bad shape.
Why do you say this? Do you think that 6 years is an unreasonable amount of time to still be designing something when the designers are volunteers and do any designing "in their spare time"?
Without Pugs, I think there would be no hope.
I agree with the sentiment but I don't think I agree with the actual statement. The Perl6 community needed someone to throw another log on the fire to keep it burning. It just so happens that log was pugs, but what's of paramount importance IMHO isn't so much pugs as is people like audrey participating in perl6. "Without audrey, there would be no hope" :-) Without people willing to push through the problems in design and implementation (including social problems), there would be no hope. (but that should go without saying)
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