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All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

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  • ...it's already having a great effect on Perl 5 development. For example, in the deprecation of pseudohashes, and in the incorporation of the // operator in 5.10.

    And useful (and usable) parts of Perl 6 *are* available already – in the form of Perl 5 modules like:

    • Perl6::Parameters
    • Perl6::Interpolators
    • Perl6::Currying
    • Perl6::Gather
    • Perl6::Placeholders
    • Perl6::Form
    • Perl6::Say
    • Perl6::Slurp
    • Perl6::Export
    To say nothing of the way that my own on-going struggle to implement the Perl6::Rules module is uncovering opportunities for use to improve the robustness of the Perl 5 regex engine.

    And, as if all that isn't enough, the Perl 6 development effort has siphoned many of the more...err..."exuberant" folk from the P5P list, and thereby allowed P5P to function much more effectively. ;-)

    Perl 5 took nearly a decade to design (if you consider Perls 1 through 4 to be prototypes). Perl 6 won't take that long, even though it's far more than twice as powerful. But it *does* take an enormous amount of time to get all the decisions right. And even more time to get them harmonious.

    We understand how frustrating that delay can be. It frustrates us too. But any project that's being designed and implemented almost entirely by unpaid volunteers, and worked on nearly exclusively in their spare cycles, is inevitably going to be executed at low priority and subject to endless interrupts.

      • Perl 6 won't take that long, even though it's far more than twice as powerful.

      Could you nail this down for us? Is Perl 6 180% more powerful or 400% more powerful than Perl 5?

      Or are linear relationships of power difficult to quantify at this point? Could it be that the power of Perl 6 is ever increasing, exponentially proportional to the distance of its first release date?

      It must be frustrating indeed to have to meet the goal of producing a language that is "far more than twice as powerful" as Perl 5,

      • It must be frustrating indeed to have to meet the goal of producing a language that is "far more than twice as powerful" as Perl 5

        That was never a "goal"; it's merely an observed outcome.

        And, of course, it *is* nonsensical to try and nail down the exact increase in "power". But given that Perl 6 adds features like:

        • hyperoperators
        • junctions (superpositions)
        • coroutines
        • strong typing
        • subroutine overloading
        • multiple dispatch
        • declarative parameter lists
        • named parameters
        • currying
        • properties and t
          • Nevertheless, thanks for pointing out the absurdity of trying to quantify such improvements.

          You're welcome.

          I am, however, reminded of a quote that might be appropriate:


          A language that doesn't have everything is actually easier to program in than some that do. - Dennis M Ritchie

          • A language that doesn't have everything is actually easier to program in than some that do.

            Actually, I don't think that's appropriate at all. I doubt that many here would seriously argue that C or sh is actually easier to program in than Perl 5 (for most tasks). And yet Perl 5 has far more features than C or sh.

            How much is "in a language" is very close to irrelevant. What matters is *what* is in it. That's why DMR says "some that do". It's not the magnitude of the feature vector; it's the direction it

            • And, after two decades of getting that direction right, doesn't it seem unlikely that he's now going to turn around and head off in some random counterproductive direction. Hasn't he earned a little more of our trust than that?

              What? You're arguing from actual real-life experience instead of from aphoristic principles? Tut tut.

              (See Voltaire's Bastard's [amazon.com] for a rip-roarin' polemic against purely principlistic argumentation.)

              • Actually, I don't think that's appropriate at all. I doubt that many here would seriously argue that C or sh is actually easier to program in than Perl 5 (for most tasks). And yet Perl 5 has far more features than C or sh.

              Well, I guess it's a good thing that neither I, nor as you point out, Dennis Ritchie, makes the point that a language that has more features is necessarily harder to program in.

              I was reminded of the Ritchie quote, however, because, to me, you seemed to be implying that a language that h

              • Look, I'm not really against Perl 6, but I am skeptical. The whole process seems to be the opposite of what has made Perl 5 so successful, incremental development with rigorous field testing.

                But that's precisely how we *are* developing Perl 6. Almost all of the new features we're folding in are either taken directly from, or refactored from syntheses of, existing modules or programming idioms. Here's a partial list of the rigorously field-tested modules whose useful functionality we are in

                  • And thank heavens it does. We need skeptics to keep us honest. ;-)

                  Thanks. I'm less skeptical now. Uh, does that mean I'm less likely to keep you honest? :-)

                  • Is it OK to be sceptical again?

                    • Now that you can download the latest Parrot release, build Rakudo, and actually play with a large and ever expanding subset of the language?

                    • In this thread, Damian reported to be productively programming in a useful subset of Perl 6 4.5 years ago.

                    • Who cares about 4.5 years ago? Who cares about Damian? I said you can work with Rakudo right now, and the size of the subset has been expanding at breakneck pace since last spring.

                      But if you want to play the sceptic, go ahead. You’ll be back anyway.

                    • KING'S

                      LEAD

                      HAT [livejournal.com]

                      was a mother to desire

                      It will come!

                      It will come!

                      It will surely come!

    • And, as if all that isn't enough, the Perl 6 development effort has siphoned many of the more...err..."exuberant" folk from the P5P list, and thereby allowed P5P to function much more effectively. ;-)

      I think it was Joseph Hall who said it best..."Perl6 is the best thing that ever happened to Perl5." :)

    • Thanks for all your replies. As I was writing my initial mope, my general crankiness was spilling over onto everything, making everything in the world seem intractable and impossible. Then I remembered that I hadn't eaten in twelve hours, and that my blood sugar was about nil, turning me into a cranky woozy mess.

      Next time I go brain shopping, I'm getting one with a UPS.

    • Not to ne a noodge, but I find it humorous that the first good thing you mention about Perl 6 is that it prompted the removal of a feature -- that no one used or understood -- from Perl 5. :-)

      I am not complaining. Keep up the work. You're right, it's produced some good fruit, and someday may be a nice language to use. I don't think TorgoX was complaining either (as someone else implied), but some of us do get idly curious about it from time to time.
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