Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
NOTE: use Perl; is on undef hiatus. You can read content, but you can't post it. More info will be forthcoming forthcomingly.

All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

Ugh 13 Comments More | Login | Reply /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More | Login | Reply
Loading... please wait.
  • ...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 u

      • 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

              • 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 has a lot of features is necessarily more powerful than one that had less features.

              I also reminded that CAR Hoare made the very interesting point in his 1980 Turing Award Winning Lecture "The Emperor's Old Clothes" (not available on-line, it seems) that languages that add a lot of untested features - for example, Algol 68 and Ada - become problematic.

              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.

              Sure, I can see that a lot of cruft had accumulated in Perl 5 and perhaps for further progress, this needed to be cleaned away, but I don't see retreating to the Cathedral as necessarily a healthy step.

              It's not really a criticism, just a concern. I have a lot invested in Perl 5 and I have to admit that a great deal of this investment is emotional. When people go around making invidious comparisons, stating that a new language will be "more than twice as powerful" when compared to Perl 5, it sets off alarms for me. It may not be rational, but this reaction has protected me from a lot of language snake-oil salesmen in the past.

              It seems that the Lisp family of languages have an excellent claim to be languages that are relatively easy to add new features through their support of meta-programming, yet somehow, Lisp languages always seem to fall short for me for "real work". Perl 5 rarely falls short for me. I am hopeful that Perl 6 will be satisfying as well.

              • 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!

Stories, comments, journals, and other submissions on use Perl; are Copyright 1998-2006, their respective owners.