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I don't see any double standards. Nobody saying it has to be ALL of things, but it needs to be at least some of those things. I've yet to hear a single compelli

I don't see any double standards. Nobody saying it has to be ALL of things, but it needs to be at least some of those things. I've yet to hear a single compelling reason for why I should use Perl 6 over anything else. The blog post itself is saying "you don't need a why", which just seems untrue. It's not enough for Perl 6 to exist, for me to invest time I need to know what the point of that time investment is. Pretty much every popular language has some reason why you should use it: c -> it maps to the machine well perl5 -> C and Bash are bad at string processing python -> C is too hard to use for a lot of simple problems, perl is complicated Haskell -> Side effects cause too many problems javascript -> It runs in a web browser java -> C is a loaded footgun The languages that all become rarely visited niches all have one thing in common: they don't have a compelling use case. They always say "all use cases", but frankly, anything that tries to be everything to everyone almost always ends up not being particularly compelling to any one group.

KirinDave 7y ago
> I've yet to hear a single compelling reason for why I should use Perl 6 over anything else. At any point, did someone promise you this? > The blog post itself is saying "you don't need a why", A refreshing proposition! It's honest that the decision is arbitrary in most cases. > It's not enough for Perl 6 to exist, for me to invest time I need to know what the point of that time investment is. I say this respectfully: within this limited context I don't think anyone cares about the whats compared to the why. EDIT: Since you're dramatically editing the content: > c -> it maps to the machine well This is ridiculous. C doesn't map well to the hardware at all. It maps well to the primitives the OS's interfaces were written in, not the machine. > The languages that all become rarely visited niches all have one thing in common: they don't have a compelling use case. As I've suggested elsewhere, I think this is a reductive view. > They always say "all use cases", but frankly, anything that tries to be everything to everyone almost always ends up not being particularly compelling to any one group. Why not? Python's strategy seems pretty close to this (only with a promise of mediocre results).
- overgard 7y ago
  >> I've yet to hear a single compelling reason for why I should use Perl 6 over anything else. > At any point, did someone promise you this? Of course not. and I'm not disappointed or betrayed. I'm just, um, not going to use it. Presumably they would prefer that I (in an impersonal sense) did use it, and I am unconvinced. > > The blog post itself is saying "you don't need a why", > A refreshing proposition! It's honest that the decision is arbitrary in most cases. Huh? On almost any successful project, the choice of something as important as the language isn't arbitrary at all. The choice between, I don't know, Ruby and Python might be arbitrary, but it's still bounded by constraints of what domain they operate in. Nobody in their right mind is saying "whatever lets just use J and APL for our OS kernel". If their argument is "use Perl 6 because, it doesn't matter anyway and it's 70 degrees outside and the sky is purple today" I don't think they're going to win many converts. > This is ridiculous. C doesn't map well to the hardware at all. It maps well to the primitives the OS's interfaces were written in, not the machine. I mean, it originally did when it was invented 40 yearsish ago. It was colloquially called a "portable assembler" for a reason. It's still a lot closer to hardware than most other languages. Even assembler doesn't really map to what hardware does anymore. So it goes. The point is that there's a reason why you'd use C. > > The languages that all become rarely visited niches all have one thing in common: they don't have a compelling use case. > As I've suggested elsewhere, I think this is a reductive view. I mean, ok, but "reductive view" doesn't mean anything to me.
b2gills 7y ago
Why does it have to be any of those things? Can't it just be its own thing for the sake of being itself? --- If you want a compelling reason to be Perl6, how about one of these: It brings together many features from many different languages and makes them feel as if they have always belonged together. It fundamentally breaks with the traditional design of what a language can be. The way in which this was done also allows mutating it to be whatever you desire in a language. (It doesn't even have keywords in the traditional meaning of the word.) It has been said that the best way to solve a problem is to create a language in which solving the problem is easy. You can make Perl6 into that language. Perl6 has a motto that easy things should be easy and hard things possible. It actually went too far with this motto. Some hard things are actually easy in Perl6. (There may even be some things which you might have thought of as impossible, that are merely difficult.) It is very strangely consistent. You can load and use multiple versions of a module in the same process. Nothing in the language is any more special than user code. It is possible to use modules written in other languages as if they were really written in Perl6. --- If you want a reason to stay away from Perl6: After getting used to writing code in Perl6, going back to another language may feel overly restrictive. If you don't want to improve as a programmer by trying languages with a different design ethos to ones you are already proficient in. (There is no other language with a similar design ethos.)

KirinDave 7y ago

> I've yet to hear a single compelling reason for why I should use Perl 6 over anything else. At any point, did someone promise you this? > The blog post itself is saying "you don't need a why", A refreshing proposition! It's honest that the decision is arbitrary in most cases. > It's not enough for Perl 6 to exist, for me to invest time I need to know what the point of that time investment is. I say this respectfully: within this limited context I don't think anyone cares about the whats compared to the why. EDIT: Since you're dramatically editing the content: > c -> it maps to the machine well This is ridiculous. C doesn't map well to the hardware at all. It maps well to the primitives the OS's interfaces were written in, not the machine. > The languages that all become rarely visited niches all have one thing in common: they don't have a compelling use case. As I've suggested elsewhere, I think this is a reductive view. > They always say "all use cases", but frankly, anything that tries to be everything to everyone almost always ends up not being particularly compelling to any one group. Why not? Python's strategy seems pretty close to this (only with a promise of mediocre results).

overgard 7y ago
>> I've yet to hear a single compelling reason for why I should use Perl 6 over anything else. > At any point, did someone promise you this? Of course not. and I'm not disappointed or betrayed. I'm just, um, not going to use it. Presumably they would prefer that I (in an impersonal sense) did use it, and I am unconvinced. > > The blog post itself is saying "you don't need a why", > A refreshing proposition! It's honest that the decision is arbitrary in most cases. Huh? On almost any successful project, the choice of something as important as the language isn't arbitrary at all. The choice between, I don't know, Ruby and Python might be arbitrary, but it's still bounded by constraints of what domain they operate in. Nobody in their right mind is saying "whatever lets just use J and APL for our OS kernel". If their argument is "use Perl 6 because, it doesn't matter anyway and it's 70 degrees outside and the sky is purple today" I don't think they're going to win many converts. > This is ridiculous. C doesn't map well to the hardware at all. It maps well to the primitives the OS's interfaces were written in, not the machine. I mean, it originally did when it was invented 40 yearsish ago. It was colloquially called a "portable assembler" for a reason. It's still a lot closer to hardware than most other languages. Even assembler doesn't really map to what hardware does anymore. So it goes. The point is that there's a reason why you'd use C. > > The languages that all become rarely visited niches all have one thing in common: they don't have a compelling use case. > As I've suggested elsewhere, I think this is a reductive view. I mean, ok, but "reductive view" doesn't mean anything to me.

b2gills 7y ago

Why does it have to be any of those things? Can't it just be its own thing for the sake of being itself? --- If you want a compelling reason to be Perl6, how about one of these: It brings together many features from many different languages and makes them feel as if they have always belonged together. It fundamentally breaks with the traditional design of what a language can be. The way in which this was done also allows mutating it to be whatever you desire in a language. (It doesn't even have keywords in the traditional meaning of the word.) It has been said that the best way to solve a problem is to create a language in which solving the problem is easy. You can make Perl6 into that language. Perl6 has a motto that easy things should be easy and hard things possible. It actually went too far with this motto. Some hard things are actually easy in Perl6. (There may even be some things which you might have thought of as impossible, that are merely difficult.) It is very strangely consistent. You can load and use multiple versions of a module in the same process. Nothing in the language is any more special than user code. It is possible to use modules written in other languages as if they were really written in Perl6. --- If you want a reason to stay away from Perl6: After getting used to writing code in Perl6, going back to another language may feel overly restrictive. If you don't want to improve as a programmer by trying languages with a different design ethos to ones you are already proficient in. (There is no other language with a similar design ethos.)