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I'm curious, how did you get that impression? I'm one of the Perl 6 developers, and IMHO the regexes and grammars are one of the "killer" features. And I've al

I'm curious, how did you get that impression? I'm one of the Perl 6 developers, and IMHO the regexes and grammars are one of the "killer" features. And I've also seen them evolve gradually, and have used them for various purposes. What gave you the impression that it has stalled? Is that the general impression on the outside of the Perl 6 community? What kind of marketing could we do to reach you?

philwelch 16y ago
From a marketing standpoint, calling it "Perl 6" is a terrible way to market it. Perl 6 implies that it's Perl, which has both good and bad connotations, and it also implies it's just an iteration on Perl 5, when in fact it's one of the most ambitious languages ever conceived. An ambitious new programming language can take ten years to develop and people are only halfway suspicious that it took so long. An iteration on Perl 5 should take nowhere close to ten years to finish. So don't call it Perl 6 :) If you wanted to keep continuity with the Perl line, then from the outset, it might have been a better idea to plan out a roadmap for Perls 6, 7, 8, and 9 rather than just Perl 6. "Perl with grammars" can be released and then you can move on to the next iteration. "Perl with grammars, objects, lazy evaluation, macros, junctions, optional static typing, and not just one but two kitchen sinks" will take upwards of 10 years to reach final release status. This has the benefit of increasing usability as idioms and common practices for new language features can evolve as each set of features is released. In practice a lot of this has been done for you ("Perl with objects" became Perl 5 + Moose). Since that didn't happen, I think casual observers are suspicious that second-system effect has taken place with Perl 6 and that it may never really be done.
- mst 16y ago
  As I said in my Iron Man forfeit talk, I'd quite like to see the perl6 spec renamed to Camelia Perl - and perl5 renamed to something else as well. The respective communities for the two languages now very much regard ourselves as two fascinating languages in the same family - one very much production ready, the other still polishing that side but a stunning work of language design research already. Now it's just a case of our marketing catching up with reality.
- sigzero 16y ago
  In my mind they made the same marketing mistake Microsoft did. You had VB6 and then .NET came along and they tried to say that VB.NET was just another VB. VB.NET is totally different. Perl6 is not Perl.
  - chromatic 16y ago
    Perl6 is not Perl. Did you mean to write "Perl 6 is not Perl 5"?
- chromatic 16y ago
  From a marketing standpoint, Without disagreeing with you, I wonder how you can judge the marketing success or failure of a project intended to last at least 20 years at this point in its adoption cycle.
  - neilk 16y ago
    Dude. The guy went out of his way to be positive about something the whole internet finds dubious at this point. Are there any valid criticisms to be made of Perl 6 or its process?
    - chromatic 16y ago
      Are there any valid criticisms to be made of Perl 6 or its process? Certainly. The failure to have a Perl 6 running on Parrot within a few months of Parrot's inception hurt development immensely. The RFC process demonstrated that the initial idea of a Python 3000 style rearranging of a few external features and some internal structures was not nearly ambitious enough. Rethinking regular expressions into grammars was a huge example of hubris. My point stands, though: the intent of Perl 6 was never to create a language or runtime or compiler which would gradually succumb to a Perl 7 which would gradually succumb to a Perl 8 and so on. Since the RFC process the intent of Perl 6 has to been to create a Perl which solves the limitations and flaws of Perl 5 and can thrive for the next twenty or more years. Put another way, the most important feature of Perl 6 is that is provides what Larry always intended of Perl 5: a language which allows you to create your own lexically-scoped dialects as necessary.
      - philwelch 16y ago
        My point stands, though: the intent of Perl 6 was never to create a language or runtime or compiler which would gradually succumb to a Perl 7 which would gradually succumb to a Perl 8 and so on. Since the RFC process the intent of Perl 6 has to been to create a Perl which solves the limitations and flaws of Perl 5 and can thrive for the next twenty or more years. The intent was to completely set aside iterative development in favor of a big design up front which is supposed to last decades without change, like some Egyptian pyramid or the Great Wall of China? And this intent came about because of a desire to fix all of Perl 5's flaws and limitations all at once? That is one of the classical blunders! The most famous of which is "never get involved in a land war in Asia", but only slightly less well-known is the Second System Effect!

philwelch 16y ago

From a marketing standpoint, calling it "Perl 6" is a terrible way to market it. Perl 6 implies that it's Perl, which has both good and bad connotations, and it also implies it's just an iteration on Perl 5, when in fact it's one of the most ambitious languages ever conceived. An ambitious new programming language can take ten years to develop and people are only halfway suspicious that it took so long. An iteration on Perl 5 should take nowhere close to ten years to finish. So don't call it Perl 6 :) If you wanted to keep continuity with the Perl line, then from the outset, it might have been a better idea to plan out a roadmap for Perls 6, 7, 8, and 9 rather than just Perl 6. "Perl with grammars" can be released and then you can move on to the next iteration. "Perl with grammars, objects, lazy evaluation, macros, junctions, optional static typing, and not just one but two kitchen sinks" will take upwards of 10 years to reach final release status. This has the benefit of increasing usability as idioms and common practices for new language features can evolve as each set of features is released. In practice a lot of this has been done for you ("Perl with objects" became Perl 5 + Moose). Since that didn't happen, I think casual observers are suspicious that second-system effect has taken place with Perl 6 and that it may never really be done.

mst 16y ago
As I said in my Iron Man forfeit talk, I'd quite like to see the perl6 spec renamed to Camelia Perl - and perl5 renamed to something else as well. The respective communities for the two languages now very much regard ourselves as two fascinating languages in the same family - one very much production ready, the other still polishing that side but a stunning work of language design research already. Now it's just a case of our marketing catching up with reality.
sigzero 16y ago
In my mind they made the same marketing mistake Microsoft did. You had VB6 and then .NET came along and they tried to say that VB.NET was just another VB. VB.NET is totally different. Perl6 is not Perl.
- chromatic 16y ago
  Perl6 is not Perl. Did you mean to write "Perl 6 is not Perl 5"?
chromatic 16y ago
From a marketing standpoint, Without disagreeing with you, I wonder how you can judge the marketing success or failure of a project intended to last at least 20 years at this point in its adoption cycle.
- neilk 16y ago
  Dude. The guy went out of his way to be positive about something the whole internet finds dubious at this point. Are there any valid criticisms to be made of Perl 6 or its process?
  - chromatic 16y ago
    Are there any valid criticisms to be made of Perl 6 or its process? Certainly. The failure to have a Perl 6 running on Parrot within a few months of Parrot's inception hurt development immensely. The RFC process demonstrated that the initial idea of a Python 3000 style rearranging of a few external features and some internal structures was not nearly ambitious enough. Rethinking regular expressions into grammars was a huge example of hubris. My point stands, though: the intent of Perl 6 was never to create a language or runtime or compiler which would gradually succumb to a Perl 7 which would gradually succumb to a Perl 8 and so on. Since the RFC process the intent of Perl 6 has to been to create a Perl which solves the limitations and flaws of Perl 5 and can thrive for the next twenty or more years. Put another way, the most important feature of Perl 6 is that is provides what Larry always intended of Perl 5: a language which allows you to create your own lexically-scoped dialects as necessary.
    - philwelch 16y ago
      My point stands, though: the intent of Perl 6 was never to create a language or runtime or compiler which would gradually succumb to a Perl 7 which would gradually succumb to a Perl 8 and so on. Since the RFC process the intent of Perl 6 has to been to create a Perl which solves the limitations and flaws of Perl 5 and can thrive for the next twenty or more years. The intent was to completely set aside iterative development in favor of a big design up front which is supposed to last decades without change, like some Egyptian pyramid or the Great Wall of China? And this intent came about because of a desire to fix all of Perl 5's flaws and limitations all at once? That is one of the classical blunders! The most famous of which is "never get involved in a land war in Asia", but only slightly less well-known is the Second System Effect!