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Perl

Is Perl 6 Being Renamed? (perl.org) 119

Posted by EditorDavid from the Perl++ dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a blog post by Curtis Poe , a freelance Perl/Agile/testing consultant and the author of the Wrox book Beginning Perl: By now, many of you have seen the Perl 6 Github issue "Perl" in the name "Perl 6" is confusing and irritating. The issue suggested renaming Perl 6. While some may think that the name of the issue is trolling, or offensive, the actual issue was created by Elizabeth (Liz) Mattijsen, one of the core Perl 6 developers, a long-time Perl 5 developer, and with her spouse, Wendy, has long been an enthusiastic support of Perl 5/6. There is no trolling here. There is a lot of deep thought, careful discussion, and a genuine desire to find a way to bypass some deeply divisive issues in the Perl community.

While the proposed name was "camelia", Damian Conway made a strong argument in favor of "raku" and it appears the community is leaning towards this name for various reasons... The far, far too terse backstory: the Perl 6 community seems to be split between those who view Perl 6 as a sister language to Perl 5 and those who view Perl 6 as a successor to Perl 5...

To say that this issue has been bitterly divisive would be an understatement.
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Is Perl 6 Being Renamed? More

Is Perl 6 Being Renamed?

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  • one of the bad things about open source languages (Score:3, Insightful)

    by iggymanz ( 596061 ) on Saturday August 31, 2019 @09:51AM (#59143806)

    Perl 6 is a different language.

    The open source language developers often have that immaturity and failure, they break backwards compatibility. This will partially or totally kill their project. It's why most Python doing useful real work in this word is 2.x and will continue to be for many years (good thing the long term stable distros will support it for years)

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Viol8 ( 599362 )

      "immaturity and failure, they break backwards compatibility"

      Agreed. There is zero reason not to have backwards compatibility and new features/syntax at the same time. Can you imagine a new version of C++ or Java that suddenly broke all the old code? It would die on its arse.

    • I agree that backwards compatibility is important, but doesn't have to be in every case. Also, most real work is been done on python 3.x not 2.x. If you are still using 2.x or doing new development on it then you are rolling the dice on security. It's 2019, there is really no reason to use 2.x, unless you lack the resources to migrate your production app or have an edge case with a library, which means you probably should have chosen Java or .net in the first place.

      • It's 2019, there is really no reason to use 2.x

        Except 2.x is a better language, and 3.x broke backwards compatibility for no good reason.

        If a platform forces me to do a migration, it will be to a platform that respects backwards compatibility, not to the "newer" version.

        • It's 2019, there is really no reason to use 2.x

          Except 2.x is a better language, and 3.x broke backwards compatibility for no good reason. If a platform forces me to do a migration, it will be to a platform that respects backwards compatibility, not to the "newer" version.

          How is 2.x a better language? Any specific examples? That is a pretty broad generalization and not really supported by a lot of the python community, except maybe the very vocal minority. I can see some things in 3.x that were done to be more consistent, example would be the print statement that uses () instead of space. Yes, it did break backward compatibility. I guess the question would be how much of a problem did this change actually make for you? A lot of people complain about things that in reality

    • What's worse is all of the warts on Perl 5 stopped being tended to (threads anybody?) fifteen years ago because Perl 6 was going to fix them all soon.

      And then it never did. Perl 6 killed the momentum of Perl 5. No slight intended to the maintainers, but I was there for Perl 4 to Perl 5 and that kind of boldness went away.

      Julia seems to have absorbed the ethos, if not the language.

      • Re:one of the bad things about open source languag (Score:4, Insightful)

        by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Saturday August 31, 2019 @12:33PM (#59144214)

        And is anyone actually using Perl 6 anyway? I hate falling back on an anecdote, but - I work in Perl, know others who work in Perl, and don’t really see or hear anything 6-related excepting the occasional Slashdot story.

      • Re:one of the bad things about open source languag (Score:5, Informative)

        by DesScorp ( 410532 ) on Saturday August 31, 2019 @12:40PM (#59144228) Journal

        >but I was there for Perl 4 to Perl 5 and that kind of boldness went away.

        Perl doesn't need "boldness". It needs community stability, and as you said, bug fixes. Perl is a mature language. There should only be incremental changes at this point. Perl 6 isn't Perl at all, and should be named something else. The best thing for Perl 5 at this point is to become the only Perl, and the foundation should probably send the 6 folks off to do their own thing.

        Besides, what really hurt Perl the most wasn't the self inflicted wounds, but the massive embrace by Linux coders of Python. Perl still has a pretty loyal following among BSD and Solaris types (and SCO users, back in the day), but when Python came along, it became THE language to code in for Linux guys.

    • It's why most Python doing useful real work in this word is 2.x

      I've heard that. I've never seen that. But I've totally heard that as being a thing. The majority of new code that I've seen written for Python is in the 3.x series. The all of the python scripts I write to do some DB tasks is 3.x. The TN5250 emulator I use to work with the 400 I work on uses python 3 for scripting macros.

      But again, that's just from my POV. I've totally heard that 2.x is still the mainstay, but I did want to chime in that I've not recently seen that. Again, that's just me, do not tak

    • I agree with you, but you should add that closed-source projects do the same thing, just as much.

  • Realism required - call it Legacy Language (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Viol8 ( 599362 ) on Saturday August 31, 2019 @09:52AM (#59143808) Homepage

    Hardly anyone uses Perl for new projects these days, Python has eaten its breakfast, lunch and dinner and mugged it for its object system while it was at it.

    • Python has the exact same underlying issue though.

      The world mostly uses Python 2.x, and will continue to do so for many years as it will be supported in long term stable distros.

      Python 3 is a different language, and someday those places with 2 might just toss Python out altogether for something else that values stability and backwards compatibility.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Viol8 ( 599362 )

        True, but for the moment Python has the momentum which Perl lost when the syntax became so obtuse and it disappeared up its own backside. I guess time will tell.

      • Python 3 is a different language, and someday those places with 2 might just toss Python out altogether for something else that values stability and backwards compatibility.

        Given the prevalence of python 2 code, I won’t be surprised if there’s a significant fork announcement next year (when I think python 2 support is, at least theoretically, going away).

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jmccue ( 834797 )
        Yes, and as a outsider to Python, looks to me like they are following Perl down the same road. I fully believe the Perl 6/5 issues is what made it a non-starter for projects, especially for enterprises who value only one thing in languages "backwards compatibly".
      • The last stats I saw was a year ago (a survey) and it should that "primary" python dev was 75% for Python 3 vs 25% for Python 2

    • mugged it for its object system while it was at it.

      Okay that definitely elicited a good chuckle from me.

  • So it took them over 15 years to develop the new standard and now they are having a huge argument over what to call it? Does anyone not a Perl 6 developer even care any more?

    • Re:Golgafrincham B Ark (Score:4, Informative)

      by iggymanz ( 596061 ) on Saturday August 31, 2019 @10:02AM (#59143832)

      15 years to throw in everything including the kitchen sink, to make a weird overly complex language with no backwards compatibility with Perl 5 (no ignorant tards yapping about Inline::Perl5 please), that now most people don't want to use.

      What to call that mutant near-useless frankenstein is the least of their worries. They stabbed Perl in the heart

      • Re:Golgafrincham B Ark (Score:5, Insightful)

        by DontBeAMoran ( 4843879 ) on Saturday August 31, 2019 @10:38AM (#59143920)

        What about Inline::Perl5?

        • Sounds like a wrapper for an inline P5 code block. If I understand this is like __asm { in C but C was still called assembly

        • Insightful? I don't know the first thing about Perl (5 or 6), I was just repeating what iggymanz said.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by PPH ( 736903 )

        throw in everything including the kitchen sink

        We could call it systemd V2.

        Kill two birds with one stone. Get Perl 6 out of the development path of Perl 5 and block systemd from growing any further.

      • Perl 6 is a brilliant language. It is not overly complex, it is simple to use, and follows the Perl philosophy of making simple things easy and hard things possible. Its ridiculous to call Perl 6 overly complex since it does not force types on you for instance like C++ does, of course you can use types, if you want to. Perl 6 has a lot of very advanced features which are very complex, of course, but its not forced on you because you don't have to use them, unlike C++ which forces types on you.

        It is not a su

        • Nope, most agree it's too complicated, so they'll never use it. And thus, Perl 6 won't be used. It'd dead on arrival and the world has moved on. it is very much Larry Wall's fault, he's the one that didn't lead and let the thing go to hell.

          Just look at some of this crap, it's nearly never-ending

          https://docs.perl6.org/languag... [perl6.org]

          https://docs.perl6.org/languag... [perl6.org]

          https://docs.perl6.org/languag... [perl6.org]

        • Perl 6 has a lot of very advanced features which are very complex, of course, but its not forced on you because you don't have to use them

          Until your coworkers use them. Or until the community uses them in open source libraries, and you are left with the choice of using the complex features or rewriting a lot of libraries from scratch.

          Unless their is some kind of guidance documentation about which features to use and which not, then you better know the advance stuff because you'll have to use it.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Nite_Hawk ( 1304 )

          Its ridiculous to call Perl 6 overly complex since it does not force types on you for instance like C++ does, of course you can use types, if you want to. Perl 6 has a lot of very advanced features which are very complex, of course, but its not forced on you because you don't have to use them, unlike C++ which forces types on you.

          Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding. Are you really making the argument that a language can't be complex if it's loosely typed? That's nuts.

    • They care, at least if you defining caring as:

      f it is named anything other than Perl no one will know what it is nor care about it. But as long as it is named Perl X, people who know about and have programmed with Perl will care about and use it.

    • Cut down all the trees!

  • Is this a successor to OCaml or a new version of Caml or the implementation language for Roku devices?

    C'mon, now, folks.

  • Jibberish 1.0 (Score:5, Funny)

    by Toby Nilsen ( 6204624 ) on Saturday August 31, 2019 @10:17AM (#59143872)
    If you put 100 million monkeys to hammer away at keyboards for 100 million years, one of them will write a c program. The rest will write Perl.

    • If you put 100 million monkeys to hammer away at keyboards for 100 million years, one of them will write a c program. The rest will write Perl.

      True, but monkeys suck at documenting their code.

  • Follow the Bitcoin crowd.

  • Sure, then can we get a real Perl 6? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by russotto ( 537200 ) on Saturday August 31, 2019 @10:29AM (#59143898) Journal

    I like the idea. Change the name, let the new one die, and come up with an actual successor to Perl 5.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by ebvwfbw ( 864834 )

      Not backward compatible then it sucks.
      Name it vacuum?

      If it's a language that's sort of like Perl, but doesn't work then it's like the dike that's failing. The girl had to put her finger in the dike.

      So name it dyke.

      It's funny, laugh.

  • Just do it (Score:3)

    by John-after-logtime ( 6156490 ) on Saturday August 31, 2019 @10:32AM (#59143904)
    Perl6 is not the same language as Perl5. So give it a new name and don't break Perl5.

  • Soooo, you have a twin sis-ter. Your feelings have now betrayed her too. Obi-Wan was wise to stick with awk, now his parse is complete. If you will not s/light/dark/gc side then perhaps she will.

    Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

  • Why don't you call Python3 "Camelia" instead?

    • Because some asshole - probably me - will nickname it chlamydia. And that's nothing like Python at all.

  • >"the Perl 6 community seems to be split between those who view Perl 6 as a sister language to Perl 5 and those who view Perl 6 as a successor to Perl 5..."

    Maybe Perl 6 could be a "spouse" language to Perl 5?

  • Too clever (Score:4, Funny)

    by thereitis ( 2355426 ) on Saturday August 31, 2019 @11:18AM (#59143998) Journal

    "Raku" and "Camelia" are too clever sounding. Camelia is too long. Raku means nothing to an English speaker. I suggest "Parry" as the new language name, a combination of "Larry" (Perl's creator) and "Perl", sounds good, and if you look up the word "parry" has a relevant meaning: "to ward off", as in warding off confusion with Perl 5.
    Also leaves itself open to cool sounding package repository, like "shield" or "sword".

  • My suggestion is Perl++. Do I get a prize or something?

    • Obviously, let Microsoft contribute and add .NET capabilities.

    • My suggestion is Perl++. Do I get a prize or something?

      Since it's a spinoff, they could try "Perl-ish" ...

      Perhaps make a sitcom out of it and have it run on ABC or Freeform (ABC Family)" along side: "Black-ish", "Grown-ish" and (soon) "Mixed-ish" (no, seriously, wish I were joking); maybe it could win an Emmy.

  • Renaming fine, Perl 6 is not Perl 5 successor (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Eravnrekaree ( 467752 ) on Saturday August 31, 2019 @11:35AM (#59144042)

    I am of the view Perl 6 is a sister language, not a successor to Perl 5. Perl 6 took liberties with the language, and it was based on a ground up new VM, which cemented this paradigm.

    Perl 5 has its own unique runtime and culture which is somewhat different than Perl 6. Perl 5's VM ITSELF is part of the Perl 5 programming culture, a lot of people are very familiar with the Perl 5 VM and want to continue to use it, the number of APIs Perl 5 VM exposes is large and a lot of people are familiar and comfortable with that code base. There has been a lot of fine tuning thats gone into it

    Being a Perl programmer for 20 years I think Perl 6 would be okay to be renamed to differentiate it from Perl 5, this is both to help Perl 5 and also help Perl 6. Both are separate platforms so the confusion that results leads to people thinking that 1) Perl 5 is depreciated. its not, Perl 5 will be, and has to be around for indefinitely as so much is dependent on it and its peculiarities, its much less work to maintain the Perl 5 VM than to try to port Perl 5 code. 2). Perl 6 is not ready yet because Perl 5 is still in use. 3) one is a drop in for the other.

    The plan for Perl 5 and Perl 6 is that Perl 6 code can be called from Perl 5 code, and vice versa, but they will have to continue to be separate runtimes. There is way too much, written in Perl 5, especially XS, it makes more sense to continue the Perl 5 VM, than to even think about porting the enormous about of Perl 5 code, and have a bridge between the Perl 6 Rakudo and Perl 5 environments

    Perl 5 VM continues to be enhanced and improved, its not a problem to have two platforms, since there can be a bridge between them.

  • As in stick a fork in it, Perl 6 is done. By their own hand.
  • I think no please

  • Isn't putting that in your job title these days a little bit like wearing bell bottom trousers and platform shoes?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Nite_Hawk ( 1304 )

      Walking into an interview sporting bell bottoms, platform shoes, and a resume sporting perl and C89 experience would be pretty damn epic.

  • Itâ(TM)s Perl (Score:3)

    by zkiwi34 ( 974563 ) on Saturday August 31, 2019 @12:11PM (#59144154)

    Calling it something else is akin to calling Hillary Clinton honest, Trump sane, Corbyn a Zionist or Johnson a ... ok then

  • Perl, "bloat edition" (Score:3)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Saturday August 31, 2019 @12:12PM (#59144158)

    Perl 6 is useful: As an extreme example of how to not do a language revision. While the tech detail-work is mostly sound, the overall change is a great, big, steaming mess. That level of change would have meant doing a new language. Doing it to an exiting just means that whoever was in charge is unaware of history and lessens learned in language design and hence they made a lot of known mistakes.

    Or the can name it "Querl" by incrementing the first letter by 1.

  • If that ever happened, they might have trouble. Call me in the year 2525.

  • Oh the stupidity (Score:3)

    by Chas ( 5144 ) on Saturday August 31, 2019 @12:42PM (#59144236) Homepage Journal

    Because "raku" or "camellia" isn't more confusing than "Perl 6".
    Never mind that "Perl" has been the name of the programming language FOR OVER THREE DECADES...

    No! Now people have collapsed into stupidity so profound that NOBODY can understand that Perl 6 is the 6th major iteration of the Perl programming language!

    I swear to fuck, I'm sometimes convinced that humanity just needs to go extinct....

    • Is there a term for when a post can be recursively applied to itself?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Chas ( 5144 )

        Well, you didn't actually bring an argument. You're just being a trollish little bitch boy.

        So, howsabout "eat a bag of dicks"?

  • ... backstory: the Perl 6 community seems to be split between those who view Perl 6 as a sister language to Perl 5 and those who view Perl 6 as a successor to Perl 5.

    Ever seen the movie A Simple Favor [wikipedia.org]?

    It'll be like that.

  • Could be called perl++. Indicates that it is still a perl, although a newer one, with more features. Another option would be to call it pearls . Then the repository for pearls modules (cpan in the perl5 world) could be called swine. You would install pearls before swine.

  • Lets call it STAB, Stunningly Brave And Beautiful.

  • Why does this sound like another kind of Python? Francis: What are you on about, Perl 6? Perl 6: From now on I want you all to call me Camelia. Reg: What?! Perl 6: It's my right as a scripting language. Judith: Why do you what to be Camelia, Perl 6? Perl 6: I don't want to be confusing and irritating. Reg: But you're always confusing and irritating. Perl 6: Don't you oppress me. Reg: I'm not oppressing you, Perl 6 -- you're unreadable. Where's the clarity going to come from? Completely new syntax? ...yadda
  • A language built with nary a concern for readability was doomed from the start.

  • ... to "Mother of Perl".

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