Perl 6 In Time For Next Christmas? 192
An anonymous reader writes Larry Wall has reportedly announced at Fosdem that "Perl 6 Developers will attempt to make a development release of Version 1.0 of Perl 6.0 in time for his 61st Birthday this year and a Version 1.0 release by Christmas 2015." From the article: "There is going to be the inevitable discussions, comments and probably some mileage from detractors to come. However ever were it so, for us in the Perl Community these are quite exciting times. We have two strong languages and a strong community, I think there is a lot that binds us together so here's looking forward to Christmas."
Enjoy years of splitting between 5 and 6 (Score:4, Insightful)
How's Python 3 adoption coming along? (and they worked so hard to make it forwards and backwards compatible if you remember to put parentheses around your print arguments!)
Re:Enjoy years of splitting between 5 and 6 (Score:5, Informative)
That the Python people went about the version bump in about the most ham-fisted way imaginable does not mean that this would somehow be the case for all languages now.
Re:Enjoy years of splitting between 5 and 6 (Score:5, Interesting)
Also I'll be enjoying (really, not sarcastically) years of using Perl5 and Perl6 in the same file due to the easy integration between the two, replacing that part of Perl5 that was ugly at my leisure, or not, and still having things work.
I really like this language a lot.
Re:Enjoy years of splitting between 5 and 6 (Score:5, Interesting)
... replacing that part of Perl5 that was ugly at my leisure, or not, and still having things work.
I actually did that about 15 years ago. I switched to Python, then transliterated all of my Perl code into it.
BTW, it was remarkable to me at the time that in every case of transliteration, the resulting Python files were smaller in terms of both number of lines and number of bytes. Then I realized that since the two are semantically similar in so many ways, Python's lack of braces was a big advantage in terms of code compactness. To be fair, though, I never was one to pack as much code into a single line of Perl as possible. Which is, of course, why I prefer Python: it was never designed for that sort of thing.
Re:Enjoy years of splitting between 5 and 6 (Score:4, Interesting)
To be clear, what I meant to say is, I only have to rewrite those portions I feel like rewriting: you can use Perl 5 from inside a Perl 6 file pretty painlessly these days, as long as you aren't looking for heavy performance or too much complex async. Perl 5 and Perl 6 are considered more "sister languages" than a necessary upgrade, with Perl 5 continued to be maintained and even developed.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Current intergration is through libperl, and future integration will likely be independent of the VM, just a "slang" using the grammar engine and MOP on the backend. Parrot was aimed at being a polyglot VM, but other VMs started to catch up in that regard so Perl 6 began to target those runtimes as well.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The reasons why perl is still (heavily) used is because of several reasons, I think (for good or bad):
1) The only people who can really read the code in an effective fashion are those who wrote it
2) The perl code that was written is immensely featureful/powerful for what it is, and it does its job well.
3) The types of people who work on software are not the same caliber of 'systems' people as the perl people from yester-year
4) Societal linguistic ability, as well as what we are able to appreciate, has somew
Re: (Score:2)
The reasons why perl is still (heavily) used is because of several reasons, I think (for good or bad):
1) The only people who can really read the code in an effective fashion are those who wrote it
I first got disillusioned with Perl many years ago when I realized I couldn't even read my own code! Then I found Python - it was the perfect solution: the same important powerful concepts such as dynamic typing and regular expressions, without all the $_!@ noise. There are times when I miss Perl's easy syntax for operations on results of regular expressions, but Python's clunkier way of doing that ultimately is the correct way for Python to do it.
Re: (Score:2)
I have always joked about perl being a 'write-only language'. and it many cases, when I look at perl code, I have zero idea what the hell is going on. reminds me of APL (which is not a good thing).
I recently 'converted' over to python and while the indentation was a bad idea (I've seen posted code be ruined simply due to posting procedures ruining the indenting on web forms) and the v2 vs v3 stuff is really broken and a bad idea, the language at least is headed in the right direction and the v2/v3 stuff w
Re: (Score:2)
your saying someone would take the time to rewrite piles of perfectly working code? Nope, backwards compatibility is one thing more open source projects should learn to value.
Re: (Score:2)
Some libraries have only been written for Python2. For me that means I use a different library, but I can understand not wanting to change something that's currently working.
Re: (Score:2)
^ this. You have (i) existing modules in your project that are not python3 compatible, (ii) existing external modules that are not python3 compatible.
The situation is a lot better now than it used to be, but for example you still cannot use the deep learning theano-based libraries. This means people still produce python2 code at this point, which means issue (i) will be going to be an issue for even longer... (Even if you are starting a project from scratch, you often want to borrow some code from a differe
Re:Enjoy years of splitting between 5 and 6 (Score:5, Interesting)
I actually find Python 2.6.x to be nearly perfect. The fact that it won't be getting any new features, only bug fixes, is actually one of its very best features for me.
In contrast, Python 3 has always seemed to me to be Guido indulging himself in whittling down the "Python warts" list. Although Python 3 is objectively better in many ways, the improvements don't seem compelling enough to me to bother to really learn, and porting code to it - even with the help of the automatic conversion tool - likewise doesn't seem worth the trouble. And I still kindda like "print" as a statement.
I do take some satisfaction, though, in the fact that Python 3 became the sort of technical success that Perl 6 never was, and never will be. To be fair, I think Guido drew some important lessons from the Perl 6 debacle, the most important of which was to make changes around the edges rather than try to totally reinvent the language. See Gall's Law: [wikipedia.org]
A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system.
Then again, there was much less need to reinvent Python.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No, sorry - I actually meant Python 2.7. That said, I haven't had much need for new features in the last few versions of Python 2.x. I think the last big feature that was added that I actually use is "list comprehensions", which goes back a ways.
Re: (Score:2)
IMHO, the sooner the world standardizes on Python 3.x, the better. It contains numerous small improvements, no one of which is invaluable, but together which add up to a better language.
As for print as a statement, I only miss that for interactive use, and you can assuage the issue by using ipython with the --autocall feature enabled. And I like the simple way you can now control how the output is formatted and where it goes, and you can re-bind the name print to completely hook the behavior of printing.
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry, I had meant Python 2.7. Anyway, I probably should reconsider Python 3 again at this point. I looked at it when it first came out, and library support definitely was an issued. The Unicode improvements of 3 never were that useful to me because nearly all of my Python work involved small personal utilities that were easy enough without those improvements.
I'm glad to hear that it's getting traction. If library support is better now, that might help a lot. Even though Guido seems to have managed the
Perl is more expressive (Score:5, Interesting)
Perl's strength is that it's expressive. It's not a language which is easy to learn or which generates heavily optimized code.
In the demo phase, you're not really worried about performance. The goal is to have something showing as quickly as possible, and not worry too much about how fast it runs, or how much memory it takes. Overspec your demo system for the time being (ie - make it really fast and install lots of memory), and once you have a reasonable interface go back and recode it in a simpler language which can be more easily optimized.
Languages which are simple to learn (c++, for example) are generally not very expressive. You end up spending tons of time debugging issues of memory allocation, library interface details, and datatype conversion.
Expressive languages are harder to learn, but any individual line in the expressive language does a lot more. Since you are writing fewer lines, and since the fewer lines do more, you end up making programs more easily and in less time.
Yes, the programs will execute a little slower, but as mentioned, this is not important in the demo stage. Your productivity will be much higher. And there are lots of places where performance simply doesn't matter. Scripts usually fall into this category.
Perl was designed by a linguist, not an engineer. As such, it's harder to learn (it's got tons more keywords and context), but once you get the hang of it coding is much more efficient. The following single line:
@Lines = sort { $a->{Name} cmp $b->{Name} } @Lines;
unfolds into several lines of C++, plus a subroutine definition with datatype definitions. The following line:
@Files = <c:/Windows/*.exe>;
can be implemented using one of over a dozen possible library calls in C++, but is builtin in perl. You don't have to look up the library call interface specific to your system.
And note that writing unreadable/unmaintainable code is an aspect of the *coder*, not the language. If you disregard perl because "other people use it to write poorly" you are probably one of those people, in which case you should avoid coding altogether.
Re: Perl is more expressive (Score:4, Interesting)
std::sort(lines.begin(), lines.end(), [](auto &l, auto &l2) { return l1.name l2.name; });
Pretty simple in c++14 as well
Re: (Score:2)
std::sort(lines.begin(), lines.end(), [](auto &l, auto &l2) { return l1.name l2.name; });
Pretty simple in c++14 as well
Mod parent up.
It is funny as I have not coded in either language in over 10 years but this C++ version is very readable compared to the perl version. Also mentioning STD in C++ can be a little nasty and difficult to read yet I understood this much easier.
Re: (Score:2)
Personally, I find the Perl version a little clearer, but to a c++ geek, the familiarity probably makes the construct obvious and the Perl version ugly; a Perl geek draws the opposite conclusion.
Re: (Score:2)
Perl6 version, FWIW:
@Lines .= sort: *.Name
Re: (Score:2)
@Lines = sort { $a->{Name} cmp $b->{Name} } @Lines;
to assign to @lines, when not raising lines is a sign your not just another Perl hacker.
@names would be the better choice, @sorted_names is another.
The Perl code is sorting hashes based on the value associated with the "Name" key in each hash. Presumably the other data in the hashes are what make a "Line" and the Name is just one of possibly many attributes. Therefore you suggestions don't make much sense to me. Perhaps you were thinking of the much simpler:
@Names = sort @Names;
Re: (Score:2)
doesn't the c++ version have a typo :) ? (auto &l should be auto &l1).
One advantage of C++ over dynamic languages is that name typos like this get detected at compile time, not much later.
Thanks for the pointer (Score:2)
That's a fair point.
Thanks for the info - I'll go brush up on C++ again.
Re: (Score:2)
std::sort(lines.begin(), lines.end(), [](auto &l, auto &l2) { return l1.name l2.name; });
If I may paraphrase an old saying, "You can write Perl in any language."
Re: (Score:2)
Go is timid update on C/Pascal. My response to it is meh. We can do a lot better than that.
Python has two big problems: (1) no strict type checking/variable declaration and (2) it's interpreted/compiled to byte code.
It also has a small problem: code indentation really doesn't work. Nice idea, but no, didn't work.
Re:Perl is more expressive (Score:5, Funny)
That's the funniest thing I've read today. We're talking about a language that has 82 ways to say a = a + 1, 81 of which are completely, gobbletygookly incomprehensible (and look like cartoon swearing) to the average (non-brain damaged) programmer. The FACT is, the language is deliberately designed to reward the cuteseypoo "I (self) graduated from VisualBasic, and I'm WAY cleverer than the rest of you", combined with the "this is a contract job, and I've never ever ever had to maintain somebody else's code" effect, produces the worst, most unreadable, most unmaintainable code on the planet. Get the average Perl programmer, point a .357 magnum at their heads, and ask them to modify something they wrote six months ago, and watch the bloody hilarity ensue.
Re: (Score:3)
I think it's the contract jobs that produce bad code. My company produces commercial software mostly written in Perl. It's been under development for 15 years and the code base is quite readable and easy to understand. That's because the programmers are not contract programmers and they have sufficiently good taste and motivation to avoid the worst of Perl's cuteness. You can write readable, maintainable Perl. It just takes a lot of work.
Of course, that applies to any other programming language as we
Re: (Score:2)
Languages need to scale to talent, so a codebase maintained by veterans of the language can use advanced constructs, while a codebase meant to be maintained by newbies can stick to the babytalk. Which is where Perl 5's flexibility can be leveraged well. I think you'll find Perl 6 to be a joy to work with, and if you have the privilege of working with a devel team that gets good at it, it will be an awesome experience, plus you can still "talk down" for stuff you need to throw to the public to maintain.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, from what I've seen of Perl 6, I think I'll stick to Perl 5. Perl 6 is much more complicated and is waaaay over-engineered. If the Moose is any indication (I believe that's an attempt to back-port P6's object model to P5), P6 will be a bit of a bloated mess.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Funny you mention it. Not an hour ago, I added some stuff to a perl script I wrote in 2009. It's not a large script (barely 1,000 lines), but my 150-line addition didn't seem to cause any great mirth or merriment.
If you write shit code, you're writing shit code. The choice of language doesn't matter, aside from the insignificant notion t
Re: (Score:2)
C++ is the wrong language to compare Perl to. Python is what you need to align with it. And it is so much tougher to build a good case for Perl in that light. (Not impossible, but it probably won't be very convincing. Perl is the anarchocapitalism of programming languages - you have near-absolute freedom to choose your ways, which is delightful for the top 20% users, but unfortunately most people choose the most awful and dirty ways in the face of this freedom, typically just for lack of experience.)
(I love
Re: (Score:2)
Nah, a programming langauge needs to be well designed, by an engineer type, so the clean and expressive way comes out naturally without a dozen hard to read and difficult to maintain variations.
Lines.sort_by! { |hsh| hsh[:Name] }
Re: (Score:2)
Ok, in this thread there are already C++, Ruby, and Perl 6 versions of your snippets, so I'll add the Python ones.
@Lines = sort { $a->{Name} cmp $b->{Name} } @Lines;
lines.sort(lambda a, b: a.name < b.name)
or
lines.sort(key=lambda o: o.name)
@Files = <c:/Windows/*.exe>;
from glob import glob
files = glob("c:/Windows/*.exe")
I think a good analogy would be Perl is Finish, Python is Esperanto. When you have hundreds of thousands of LoC to maintain, I guess a more direct and unambiguous language is preferred.
It occurred to me that perhaps Perl is an attempt to seduce the computer... too bad
Re: (Score:2)
The problem with Perl is not just the time to learn it. The biggest problem is that Perl developers believe in TMTOWTDI (There is more than one way to do it) principle. As a result, numerous Perl idioms exist for doing the exact same thing. No matter how much time you spend reading Perl programming books and coding yourself, you keep running into idioms that look slicker and better (or just bizzare) relative to what you know.
Why is this bad? This is a difficulty for big application development projects wher
Re: (Score:3)
Perl was designed by a linguist, not an engineer.
Now you've got me wondering: was Esperanto designed by an engineer, not a linguist?
Re: (Score:3)
Languages which are simple to learn (c++, for example) are generally not very expressive.
This is the first time I've ever heard someone say C++ is easy to learn. I've been programming in it for years and I still don't feel entirely confident.
Re: (Score:2)
Frankly, I think it's undignified that teachers are bogged down trying to explain this nonsense at the very earliest stages of teaching programming.
Isn't that why we have teaching languages, like LOGO? Whatever happened to that whole idea?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
C++ is easy to teach and easy to learn. Much easier than Java, for example.
ok, you started with the dumbest two sentences I've seen on the internet today.
Now, if you lived up to your name, and had some empirical evidence for your hypothesis, I would be impressed. But I've seen too many people struggle through C++ classes, so I roll my eyes.
Re: (Score:2)
Meh, Perl4 was the first programming language I ever learned and first got a job doing. I found it all rather intuitive and easy to learn.
Re: (Score:2)
That's downright weird looking.
...if you don't grok closures/anonsubs. If you do, it looks much neater.
Wahoo I can open my 2003 Christmas presents (Score:2)
I thought it was done over a decade ago but was so different due to strange stuff like 100 different identifiers that no one used it?
Re: (Score:2)
No, you may be thinking of an early prototype, named pugs, written in Haskell as part of the whirpool design process. The pool has whirled several times since then. I really admire the attention to detail that's been put into the Perl 6 specification and the implementation is coming along nicely and is already very usable for both small ad-hoc scripts and larger stuff, too. Just not for high performance quite yet and a few places where you have to work around some TODOs.
SEE: Python v2 vs Python v3. (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
ha, never seen anyone use Python 3. Python 2.x frameworks are huge and everywhere though
Re: (Score:2)
You are funny, we don't use Ruby where I work. Plenty of Python 2.5 and 2.6 there though.
Ruby I just use for personal things, it's fun.
version 1.0 of 6.0...is silly (Score:2)
Perl lets me do what I want (Score:5, Insightful)
I am an adult and when I am programming for my own enjoyment I don't want to be told how I have to program. I definitely don't want to have to worry about squeezing my design into some Object Oriented bullshit. I want to tabulate my code the way I feel best. If I want to enjoy some dynamic variable scoping so be it. Mix up some functional with some procedural go for it. Create some cryptic one liner that I won't understand later, live and learn.
Bonus points for still serving its original purpose stellarly. Give me some text and I will mold it to how I want. This is what a majority of commercial software does anyways.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
A lot of the wins from Perl6 have already been backported to Perl5. At this point I'm in no rush to switch to Perl6 even if it does come out.
The easy wins, yes; the low-hanging fruit, yes, absolutely. Perl5 really does benefit.
But there is some stuff in Perl 6 that requires you to think about languages differently - stuff that doesn't map well to perl5. New stuff unless you're an academic language geek, that's just creeping out of the lab. Stuff that's hard to wrap your head around at first, and then you
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
I'm a huge fan of Perl... Perl5 that is.... I'm just hoping they don't screw up the language with 6. Perl5 works great for me---the few bits of Perl6 that I've seen look akward :-/
Re: (Score:3)
You don;t have to worry -- your Perl 5 code is safe, since there is no directive at all being pushed to "replace" Perl 5 with Perl 6. They will exist as sister languages, won't fight each other when installed together, and there is a thriving Perl 5 community actively developing and maintaining Perl 5 for the forseeable future.
Re: (Score:2)
I agree with everything you said. Having said that, however, perl should not be used but for the simplest of things in the professional world... it's simply not maintainable, because its use encourages the "many ways to do it" mentality, and then nobody can grok what over developers have done. It's certainly at least part of the saying "perl is the only thing that can interpret perl" saying.
Re: (Score:2)
it's simply not maintainable, because its use encourages the "many ways to do it" mentality,
No. Much perl code is simply not maintainable, because perl is easy enough to grok that people who are not good coders are capable of producing relatively powerful code. Good coders will produce comprehensible code in any language which permits it, and perl does that. It's not brainfuck.
really? (Score:2)
I was actually not aware that Perl 6 was still, actually, being developed as "someone may use this for real".
I, unlike many people, like perl. Please don't get me wrong - I'm not trying to flame here. I personally love perl (5), and I'd say it's the language I'm most comfortable/familiar with. It's what I've used for years when I've needed to write something.
But I fully realize that perl is not preferred by many, if not most, these days. It has been replaced in preference by python for many (most?) sysadmin
Re: (Score:2)
We actually use Perl quite heavily where I work, and its use is only growing. We've built rather significant pieces of our infrastructure around it, including a rather impressive internal project that uses Perl as a metaprogramming language. You'll get yelled at if you deviate from the standard perl-based development flows we've put in place.
So, "isn't used all that much anymore" may be more anecdotal than not? I guess it really depends on the shop whether perl use is increasing or decreasing.
Hurrah for performance improvements! (Score:3)
With all the work that has been poured into MoarVM, MoarVM Perl 6 is now painfully slow.
This is a tremendous improvement. The best they'd ever managed with Parrot was "abysmally slow." Before that, perl 6 implementations ranged from "diabolically slow" to "the madness-inducing manifestation of the visage of Gn'oguracha, Elder Slug-God of Unspeed."
A typical statement from a recent presentation [act.yapc.eu]: "2013.08 was about 3,600x slower than Perl 5. 2014.08 is 34x slower. Better. But still sucks."
If they keep pouring in the effort, eventually they may reach parity with Perl 5, which was simply very slow. It is unlikely they will ever approach the performance of modern javascript engines, which are just plain slow.
Re: (Score:2)
This is a tremendous improvement. The best they'd ever managed with Parrot was "abysmally slow." Before that, perl 6 implementations ranged from "diabolically slow" to "the madness-inducing manifestation of the visage of Gn'oguracha, Elder Slug-God of Unspeed."
Hilarious. And yes it was very, very, very, slow. And yes it continues to speed up. At this point it's OK for scripts that run occasionally, and for some medium-duty stuff if you don't mind spending a bit of time doing some tweaking-you-shouldn't-have to.
given the state of python, ruby, haskell etc ... (Score:2)
who is waiting for this with bated breath? i think the wait is over, we've moved on from needing anything from perl6.
Is that $year++ or ++$year ? (Score:2)
With all the delays I hope the first and not the second.
Whatever happens: congratulations and thanks to a team who have done so much over the years!
I wonder if matters any more (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Maybe it will happen, but by then everyone reading this today will be 61+.
Adoption is going to be slow. The current perl is like XP with one important difference - it's still being distributed.
Re: (Score:2)
Perl 6 .. from what I read a decade ago ... has 100 different data types? It is a monster which should be avoided for any project where people have to read this stuff. Larry Wall is a linguist turned programmer where Perl is based on expressiveness.
I have not seen Perl used at work for many years besides some dependency for some Linux distro app.
In other words it is the SystemD of programming languages compared to Perl 5.
over a decade of hard work at getting it right (Score:5, Informative)
From a decade ago until now, the Perl devs have spent those ten years improving upon what you either misunderstood or are exaggerating for comedic effect.
Java was rushed out quickly, and early versions of Java made that obvious. Perl6 is the opposite - they've taken all the time needed to perfectly implement their vision, to make it exactly what it's supposed to be. Not everything is nail, so a hammer isn't the right tool for every job, but Perl6 is a mighty fine hammer. If you have a task well suited to what Perl6 is made for, it's a fine tool for the job.
Re: (Score:2)
Unless Larry took features away my guess is he added more identifiers, data types, and other things as that is what he does. I could be mistaken.
If there are now 1,000 statistical combinations to add/substract and print out 2 sets of numbers I think I would not count that as a success.
yes. Ex: some overuse of punctuation removed (Score:3)
>. Unless Larry took features away
The first thing decided about Perl6 was that some things would go away, meaning you wouldn't have automatic full backward compatibility. Certain constructs that result in a dense line of punctuation marks were an early example.
To be clear, you can now do those things in a more clear, consistent, general and intuitive way - the power wasn't removed, rather special cases and sparse syntax were replaced with concepts that are more generally applicable, using a more clear
Re: (Score:2)
That was /is a big part of the appeal to perl 5 for me.
Perhaps this is a bad example, but "five plus five, which is then divided by seven" may be more clear and consistent, but (5+5)/7 is easier to express - and i'ts formulaic, so it's easier for me to remember.
I really don't want to be verbing nouns and nouning verbs to write a regular expression.
Re:There's more than 1 way to do it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
My point is that choice of language does not completely prevent poor habits. Spaghetti can be constructed even from languages with structures that discourage it. Whether that's from poor teaching or other causes I do not know, but there is some pretty bad code out there in a wide range of languages for whatever reason.
HUGE issue: Code sloppiness. (Score:2)
(I notice that, when someone in the U.S. says something unusual, people in the U.S. often feel that the intent may be to attack them.
I suggest you visit Brazil. People are much happier there than in the United States. There are many shortcomings in the Brazilian culture. However, Brazilians are likely to consider that what someone says is just that person expressing himself or herself, and not an attack.)
Re: (Score:2)
15 years is almost a decade? JVM, .net, JavaScript (Score:3)
FYI it can target most any virtual machine. Parrot is just one. The JVM is another. For example, Rakudo Perl is a Perl 6 implementation which targets JVM, MoarVM, JavaScript and Parrot.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
But it's got wonderful plumage, don't you think ?
Re: (Score:2)
In other words it is the SystemD of programming languages compared to Perl 5.
Fuck! Don't say that! Red Hat might adopt it shortly before Ubuntu starts cramming it down our throats!
Re: (Score:2)
In other words it is the SystemD of programming languages compared to Perl 5.
I've found several choices made by systemd relatively deplorable. I find Perl 6's choices rational and convenient, pretty much all of them. So no.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Perl Nukem Forever (Score:3)
I hear they changed the name.
Re: (Score:2)
As I have learned through many painful lessons, anything language X can do, Perl can do too - in an unnecessarily confusing manner.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
IIRC, the Christmas release will be tagged 6.0.0. That was sort of a misinterpretation of an off-the-cuff remark.
Re: (Score:3)
They've been working at Perl 6 for - what? Ten years now? In that time one can develop an OS from scratch. What's Perl going to do? Give you minty fresh breath all day long and unlimited sex with multiple, highly-desirable partners of your choice?
No, that was Perl5. Perl6 is all of that, with Asian twins.
... oh, and regular expression grammars, but hey: Asian twins!
Re: (Score:2)
Regular expression grammars? Perl 5's regexes still beat everyone else's hands down. Significant advances here--especially if performance optimized--would be something to have a look at.
15 years. That the new :O ==8 operator (Score:2)
Perl6 began July 19, 2000, announced by Larry Wall in his State of the Onion address.
Yes, it will indeed include the feature you requested, via this new operator, which looks much like Perl's other operators: :O ==8
There's actually a lot of truth in that joke. It's been fifteen years not because nothing was being done, but because a lot was done, and done very thoughtfully, after thorough analysis. The goal was not to get it to market quickly (ala Java) or to solve a pressing business need right now (Googl
Re: (Score:2)
No, Larry and co. screwed around for 15 years, trying to throw in everything and the kitchen sink, and made a badly designed hodge-podge of a mulligan stew. And Perl 6 still isn't done. The world has moved on, only legacy code in Perl 5. Perl 6 is doomed if it even comes out, nothing of note will be done with it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
God, what a nightmare is to try to actually understand existing code from a different coder.
Where have I heard this? I'm sure someone uttered this phrase before I just can't place ... oh well I'm sure it will come to me.
Before you blame me for being my fault, trolling, etc...
"How come" every time "everybody" starts a paragraph with this phrase disaster is certain to follow?
How come I don't have any problem with any other language?
We all keep lists of languages YOU don't have a problem with.
How come everybody sane I know avoids it as well?
We also know everyone you know whom you deem to be sane.
NSA is actually a bunch of wannabee chumps next to your average Slashdotter with karma to burn.
Re: (Score:2)
Perl 6 is the developers equivalent of Duke Nukem Forever. I'll believe it when I see it.
Appropriate simile.
Re: (Score:2)
My money's on fusion reactors being commercially viable before Perl 6
Maybe it will be used by Doc in the next "Back to the Future" movie instead of "Mr. Fusion".
She might be chubby, but she's fit! (Score:2)
but Perl is that slightly chubby girl with the wry smile that is always reliable and willing to go to the dance with you.
Perl still runs fast [debian.org].
And, before running, detects typing mistakes in variables when you "use strict;" (which, of course, your editor automatically inserts). Python has this little problem that such mistypings are still a run-time error. When the code that uses them executes. Oh the horror.
Re: (Score:2)
Fosdem has over 550 talks, and is completely run by volunteers. It will take some time, but will most likely end up on http://video.fosdem.org/2015 [fosdem.org].