4 ms·

Perl 6 doesn't have a GIL, and already has a sane concurrency model, but the lack of libraries and community interest seems to make that pretty much a non-start

by jrs95 9y ago

Perl 6 doesn't have a GIL, and already has a sane concurrency model, but the lack of libraries and community interest seems to make that pretty much a non-starter.

DougN7 9y ago
Well, that and Perl has to be one of the most unreadable languages out there ;)
- vgy7ujm 9y ago
  Only if you don't know Perl... To me Python is more unreadable ;)
  - bsder 9y ago
    Only if you know ALL of Perl. I used to carry around a Perl program of my own on a printout to take to VLSI interviews. That way when I got the "Do you know Perl?" question I could bring it out and force the interviewer into MY stupid subset of Perl rather than being stuck in his stupid subset of Perl. That's not a compliment to the language.
    - vgy7ujm 9y ago
      Is Python really any different or is it just wishful thinking? Why do I see Python programs that look like a weird mix of Lisp and Java? Surely it is because even with what Python enforce, there are many many ways to produce unclear code that really don't even has to do with the language used. And why did my employer see the need for the comprehensive Python style guidelines manual... I guess Python bit just as hard as Perl. Also now that Python is used more by newbies and non-programmers that is where more of the bad code end up (aka Perl late 90s, still pollutes the internet). The quality of Perl frameworks, libs, example code etc is actually increasing and getting easier to find.
      - bsder 9y ago
        > Is Python really any different or is it just wishful thinking? I'll stick my neck out and say that personally I feel that Python is actually better in this regard. Perl pissed me off so much that I left Perl at the height of its popularity. I probably had least 5 years(probably closer to 10+, but my memory of dates is fuzzy--pretty sure I never used Perl 3, though ...) years of professional use of Perl under my belt at that point. I still migrated to Python. That's a pretty big indictment when someone is willing to go back to being a n00b rather than continue to put up with continuing grief. > Why do I see Python programs that look like a weird mix of Lisp and Java? Surely it is because even with what Python enforce, there are many many ways to produce unclear code that really don't even has to do with the language used. The difference, from my experience, is that newbies in Python don't write code that A) other newbies can't understand and B) requires excessive mental effort from experienced folks to understand. Neither of those were true in my experience for Perl. A newb in Perl would very quickly trip something that would boggle even your local Perl expert. I remember when I was a beginner and posted a 15 line program to comp.lang.perl and watched several of the experts actually wondering what the correct interpretation of the grammar was. I don't think I ever managed to cause something like that in Python. Obviously, I threw that program out post haste. Sure, people can make amazingly complicated things with generators, decorators, etc once they get the hang of the language. However, newbies don't normally do this in Python. As you point out, they normally write it like Java (for better and worse). In Perl, newbies immediately had to grapple with things like list vs scalar context and god help you if you tripped over a corner case (although, to be fair, God, in the form Randall Schwartz, WOULD quite often help you if you asked on comp.lang.perl ...) > And why did my employer see the need for the comprehensive Python style guidelines manual... I guess Python bit just as hard as Perl. I would personally expect that any company writing a very large quantity of code would produce a style guide for any language they use. > The quality of Perl frameworks, libs, example code etc is actually increasing and getting easier to find. That's actually really cool.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
smitherfield 9y ago
It’s also still dog-slow for the (Perl 5 / scripting-language) common case, which makes whatever theoretical performance improvements to its semantics a bit academic at this point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15004977 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15004977
- ash_gti 9y ago
  If you use master instead of the current release that example goes from about two mins to just under one minute for my machine. Also, if you use .subst(‘y’, ’n’) instead of a regex it runs in under 9 seconds locally. Thats still much slower than perl 5 (which locally takes less than half a second) but they’re making great strides at improving performance.
  - ash_gti 9y ago
    So, doing another simple change to my code brought the runtime down to a few ms. Doing: time yes | head -n1000000 | perl6 --profile -e 'for $*IN.readchars { .subst("y", "n").print }’ > /dev/null says it took 86 ms. Which is pretty decent I’d say.
    - smitherfield 9y ago
      Sure, but that's still kinda defeating the purpose of providing functionality that's easy to remember and type. Might as well do time echo "#include <stdio.h> main(n){char*b,*s=n=0;getdelim(&s,&n,-1,stdin);for(b=s;*s;++s)*s=='y'&&*s='n';puts(b);}">s.c|yes|head -n1000000|tcc -w -run s.c>/dev/null real 0m0.028s user 0m0.023s sys 0m0.019s 28 milliseconds!
      - ash_gti 9y ago
        I was mostly just pointing out that perl6 might not be as slow as the comment you linked suggests. There seems to be something about using `perl6 -pe` that caused it to be slower than you’d expected. However, using a different approach its reasonably fast, or at least it appears reasonably comparable to the perl 5 example that was provided. Hopefully more edge cases will be discovered and fixed as the implementation matures as well.

by jrs95 9y ago

Perl 6 doesn't have a GIL, and already has a sane concurrency model, but the lack of libraries and community interest seems to make that pretty much a non-starter.

DougN7 9y ago

Well, that and Perl has to be one of the most unreadable languages out there ;)

vgy7ujm 9y ago
Only if you don't know Perl... To me Python is more unreadable ;)
- bsder 9y ago
  Only if you know ALL of Perl. I used to carry around a Perl program of my own on a printout to take to VLSI interviews. That way when I got the "Do you know Perl?" question I could bring it out and force the interviewer into MY stupid subset of Perl rather than being stuck in his stupid subset of Perl. That's not a compliment to the language.
  - vgy7ujm 9y ago
    Is Python really any different or is it just wishful thinking? Why do I see Python programs that look like a weird mix of Lisp and Java? Surely it is because even with what Python enforce, there are many many ways to produce unclear code that really don't even has to do with the language used. And why did my employer see the need for the comprehensive Python style guidelines manual... I guess Python bit just as hard as Perl. Also now that Python is used more by newbies and non-programmers that is where more of the bad code end up (aka Perl late 90s, still pollutes the internet). The quality of Perl frameworks, libs, example code etc is actually increasing and getting easier to find.
    - bsder 9y ago
      > Is Python really any different or is it just wishful thinking? I'll stick my neck out and say that personally I feel that Python is actually better in this regard. Perl pissed me off so much that I left Perl at the height of its popularity. I probably had least 5 years(probably closer to 10+, but my memory of dates is fuzzy--pretty sure I never used Perl 3, though ...) years of professional use of Perl under my belt at that point. I still migrated to Python. That's a pretty big indictment when someone is willing to go back to being a n00b rather than continue to put up with continuing grief. > Why do I see Python programs that look like a weird mix of Lisp and Java? Surely it is because even with what Python enforce, there are many many ways to produce unclear code that really don't even has to do with the language used. The difference, from my experience, is that newbies in Python don't write code that A) other newbies can't understand and B) requires excessive mental effort from experienced folks to understand. Neither of those were true in my experience for Perl. A newb in Perl would very quickly trip something that would boggle even your local Perl expert. I remember when I was a beginner and posted a 15 line program to comp.lang.perl and watched several of the experts actually wondering what the correct interpretation of the grammar was. I don't think I ever managed to cause something like that in Python. Obviously, I threw that program out post haste. Sure, people can make amazingly complicated things with generators, decorators, etc once they get the hang of the language. However, newbies don't normally do this in Python. As you point out, they normally write it like Java (for better and worse). In Perl, newbies immediately had to grapple with things like list vs scalar context and god help you if you tripped over a corner case (although, to be fair, God, in the form Randall Schwartz, WOULD quite often help you if you asked on comp.lang.perl ...) > And why did my employer see the need for the comprehensive Python style guidelines manual... I guess Python bit just as hard as Perl. I would personally expect that any company writing a very large quantity of code would produce a style guide for any language they use. > The quality of Perl frameworks, libs, example code etc is actually increasing and getting easier to find. That's actually really cool.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

smitherfield 9y ago

It’s also still dog-slow for the (Perl 5 / scripting-language) common case, which makes whatever theoretical performance improvements to its semantics a bit academic at this point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15004977 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15004977

ash_gti 9y ago
If you use master instead of the current release that example goes from about two mins to just under one minute for my machine. Also, if you use .subst(‘y’, ’n’) instead of a regex it runs in under 9 seconds locally. Thats still much slower than perl 5 (which locally takes less than half a second) but they’re making great strides at improving performance.
- ash_gti 9y ago
  So, doing another simple change to my code brought the runtime down to a few ms. Doing: time yes | head -n1000000 | perl6 --profile -e 'for $*IN.readchars { .subst("y", "n").print }’ > /dev/null says it took 86 ms. Which is pretty decent I’d say.
  - smitherfield 9y ago
    Sure, but that's still kinda defeating the purpose of providing functionality that's easy to remember and type. Might as well do time echo "#include <stdio.h> main(n){char*b,*s=n=0;getdelim(&s,&n,-1,stdin);for(b=s;*s;++s)*s=='y'&&*s='n';puts(b);}">s.c|yes|head -n1000000|tcc -w -run s.c>/dev/null real 0m0.028s user 0m0.023s sys 0m0.019s 28 milliseconds!
    - ash_gti 9y ago
      I was mostly just pointing out that perl6 might not be as slow as the comment you linked suggests. There seems to be something about using `perl6 -pe` that caused it to be slower than you’d expected. However, using a different approach its reasonably fast, or at least it appears reasonably comparable to the perl 5 example that was provided. Hopefully more edge cases will be discovered and fixed as the implementation matures as well.