Damian Conway On Perl 6 and the Philosophy of Programming

M-Saunders writes: Perl 6 has been in development since 2000. So why, 14 years later, hasn't it been released yet? Linux Voice caught up with Damian Conway, one of the architects of Perl 6, to find out what's happening. "Perl 6 has all of the same features [as Perl 5] but with the rough edges knocked off of them", he says. Conway also talks about the UK's Year of Code project, and how to get more people interested in programming.

Now I know why it took so long

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

When you knock the "rough edges" off of Perl, there's nothing left.

Re: "The real problem..." he explained

[CRCulver]

Wrong been using python3.x for ~12months. some people don't like change and prefer to whine - meanwhile in the real world people like me get on with it - Quietly.

I'm not a professional developer, but I do meet a lot of Python devs, and I always ask them which version of Python their shop is developing for. The answer so far has always been Python 2, often Python 2.5 or Python 2.6.

Recently I wanted to write up a new application for something since existing ones don't fit my particular needs, and do it in Python 3 since I prefer its Unicode handling, but virtually all the libraries I could think to use were still Python 2 only, and a look at the mailing lists showed that these libraries' developers were positively hostile to Python 3 ("if you want to start a Python 3 fork, fine, but you'll get zero recognition or help from me").

Anecdotal? Sure. But still enough to get one down.

Re: "The real problem..." he explained

[Anonymous Coward]

The statistics do not support your observation. Of the major powerhouse python projects, over 80% have python 3x support. Here [appspot.com] is a site that tracks the top 200 python packages.

Re: "The real problem..." he explained

[CRCulver]

My observation consisted of two parts which you have erroneously conflated. When it comes to professional devs, shops may nonetheless continue to work with Python 2 even if major libs are ported to Python 3, because Python 2 is what they are used to and those major libs will continue to support Python 2 for years to come.

The second paragraph represented only my experience as a casual Python user. Yes, big-name libraries have been converted, but there are still loads of smaller apps and libraries that appeal to hobbyists that are Python 2-only and will remain so until someone outright forks them away from their current, Python 3-hostile administrators.