Re^2: How much is Perl 6 the community rewrite of Perl?

Perl 6 didn't evolve, they threw away most of Perl 5....

Untrue. The apocalypses have always been deltas against Perl 5.

Promises of the money founded Perl 6 community weren't and couldn't be delivered after 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and finally 8 years of money founded development.

How much money? Do you know? (I'll tell you this -- all of the money that's gone into Parrot, Pugs, Perl 6, Rakudo, SMOP, Elf, and whatever else in the past eight years couldn't buy you one year of the time spent on the JVM or the CLR. You might be able to pay for the coffee breaks of all of the developers of either system.)

So remember that this is just one view, and mostly from the outside, of the state of affairs.

That amuses me. It's not as if we're some secret cabal who meets in shadowy, dark rooms to cackle and drink brandy and smoke big cigars and plot the future. There are eight freakin' years of email you could dig through to find out what's happened. I've published design minutes from weekly Perl 6 meetings for years. There's no super-secret initiation ceremony into the hidden mysteries of Perl 6. All you have to do to become part of the secret shadowy cabal of volunteer community members developing Perl 6 is ask a question on IRC or a mailing list, submit a patch, write a test, report test results, point out a typo in the documentation, or a dozen other very small tiny things. I'm not sure how we could make that easier, other than kidnapping you and tying your hands to the keyboard.

I just don't get why it's easier to speculate about things from a perspective you admit is flawed, especially when it's so simple to get a better perspective.

Comment on Re^2: How much is Perl 6 the community rewrite of Perl?

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Re^3: How much is Perl6 the community rewrite of Perl? by kyle (Abbot) on Jan 02, 2009 at 19:33 UTC
I just don't get why it's easier to speculate about things As you say, there are "eight freakin' years of email" to "dig through." It's so much easier to speculate! I've semi-casually tried to get an idea of "what's going on with Perl 6" a few times. Perhaps my attempts have been unreasonably casual, but they've not been very satisfying. Getting a good perspective is simple the same way reading the Camel from cover to cover is simple, which is to say it's easier to understand how to do it than it is to take the time to do it.	[reply]
Re^4: How much is Perl 6 the community rewrite of Perl? by chromatic (Archbishop) on Jan 02, 2009 at 20:00 UTC
It's so much easier to speculate! I suppose one way to read that is as a complaint that we've put out far too much information about what we're doing and why.	[reply]
Re^5: How much is Perl 6 the community rewrite of Perl? by kyle (Abbot) on Jan 02, 2009 at 20:08 UTC
You could also read it as a complaint that the information there is lacks organization and/or summarization that would make it accessible to people who want quick answers. Give a man a fish, he eats today. Teach a man to fish, he eats for life. Give a man a shelf of text books on the ecology and biology of water dwelling fauna, and he will starve before learning to fish.	[reply]
Re^3: How much is Perl 6 the community rewrite of Perl? by elmex (Friar) on Jan 02, 2009 at 20:50 UTC
1. I said I followed the development as a lurker. As a lurker subscribed to perl6-all mailing list, reading mostly regularly. I know pretty well what happened the last 6 years. 2. I also didn't say or admit that my perspective is flawed. I only said what my perspective is. 3. Why should I spent one minute on coding for Perl 6 when I can actually do new stuff and solve my problems with an already good language which I don't have to bugfix (Perl 5).	[reply]
Re^4: How much is Perl 6 the community rewrite of Perl? by chromatic (Archbishop) on Jan 02, 2009 at 21:39 UTC
Why should I spent one minute on coding for Perl 6 when I can actually do new stuff and solve my problems with an already good language which I don't have to bugfix (Perl 5). If everyone had the same attitude, there'd be no PerlMonks, no CPAN, no Perl 6, and no Perl 5, to name a few projects which exist due to volunteer effort. I know pretty well what happened the last 6 years. If you think, as you wrote: Perl 6 didn't evolve, they threw away most of Perl 5, maybe except the sigil syntax, also things were promised that never were realized or could actually be realized, which formed a community of dreamers, following the dream of the ultimate programming language. And currently it looks like those dreamers weren't able to deliver _anything_ at least remotely stable, except a very fuzzy specification and a test suite. ... then I don't believe -- at all -- that you know what happened the past few years.	[reply]
Re^5: How much is Perl 6 the community rewrite of Perl? by elmex (Friar) on Jan 02, 2009 at 23:14 UTC
If everyone had the same attitude, there'd be no PerlMonks, no CPAN, no Perl 6, and no Perl 5, to name a few projects which exist due to volunteer effort. I'm actively involved in many free software projects and I'm the maintainer of more than just one module on CPAN. I usually report any bugs I find in other peoples software. (And I in fact reported now fixed bugs I found in Perl 5). I even attend to Perl Workshops and held a talk last year. All this is pure volunteered effort.	[reply]
Re^6: How much is Perl 6 the community rewrite of Perl? by chromatic (Archbishop) on Jan 03, 2009 at 01:08 UTC
Re^7: How much is Perl 6 the community rewrite of Perl? by elmex (Friar) on Jan 03, 2009 at 09:37 UTC
Some notes below your chosen depth have not been shown here
Re^4: How much is Perl 6 the community rewrite of Perl? by jeffa (Bishop) on Jan 02, 2009 at 21:01 UTC
I think chromatic meant that if you think you are on the outside, than that itself is the flawed perspective. The only one preventing you from "getting in" is yourself. You are welcome here. (If you know the secret knock. Just kidding. :P) jeffa L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L-- -R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B-- H---H---H---H---H---H--- (the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^5: How much is Perl 6 the community rewrite of Perl? by elmex (Friar) on Jan 02, 2009 at 21:16 UTC
Yes, I think I'm on the outside because I'm not involved in the language development. (And I don't plan to, I have more than enough projects going.) I described the image I got by following the mailing lists the last years. So my perspective isn't flawed due to too few information IMO. The only thing I didn't do was to become even more tightly involved with the whole project and write code. (Even though I once submitted a test to the PUGS SVN).	[reply]
Re^3: How much is Perl 6 the community rewrite of Perl? by jeffa (Bishop) on Jan 02, 2009 at 20:57 UTC
"All you have to do to become part of the secret shadowy cabal of volunteer community members developing Perl 6 is ask ..." Sounds familiar ... http://www.askafreemason.org/ ;) jeffa L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L-- -R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B-- H---H---H---H---H---H--- (the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)	[reply]