4 ms·

SBCL is not Common Lisp. ChickenScheme is not Scheme, nor is guile Scheme. GCC is not C. V8 is not JavaScript. Neither is SpiderMonkey. clang is also not C. tcc

SBCL is not Common Lisp. ChickenScheme is not Scheme, nor is guile Scheme. GCC is not C. V8 is not JavaScript. Neither is SpiderMonkey. clang is also not C. tcc is not C. Visual C++ is not C or C++. Delphi is not Object Pascal. Pypy is not Python, nor is Jython, nor is Stackless Python, nor is IronPython. JRuby is not Ruby. yasm and fasm are not x86 assembly or x86_64 assembly or ARM assembly. I'm seeing a pattern of things that are named tools which are not the exact name of the language they compile or run.

cogman10 7y ago
Here's the difference. If I said "what's an implementation of Common lisp?" You'd say SBCL. If I Said "What's an implementation of C" you'd say GCC. If I said "What's an implementation of Javascript?" You'd say V8, Spidermonkey, etc. When I ask "What's an implementation of Perl6" The answer is "Nothing implements perl 6, isn't that wonderful!" It used to take forever diving around to find something that could run some subset of perl 6, usually with the disclaimer of "This isn't really perl 6, but rather a language that seems like perl 6" And you'd get the same thing from the mailing lists/etc.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > When I ask "What's an implementation of Perl6" The answer is Rakudo (compiler) and Rakudo Star (full distribution). Both of which have been production-ready since shortly after the Perl 6.c spec release in December 2015. Your rant would be understandable back before there was a stable spec, especially long before when the in-process language description and the various implementations were sometimes far apart. But it's been years since it had even a remote resemblance to reality.
  - mkozlows 7y ago
    When a project has been going on for decades, things that have only changed in the last few years are not going to be immediately and obviously understood by people. The legacy of confusion and weirdness around the Perl 6 project is a legit problem, even/especially if it's no longer true and now Perl 6 is like a normal language.
    - cestith 7y ago
      This feeds directly back into the decision to delineate Perl6 from Perl with a new name.
- cestith 7y ago
  Right now rakudo with MoarVM is for all intents and purposes the main implementation of Perl6. The rakudo frontend also works with the JVM. There's work to make it work with JavaScript as a backend. It is in a continual state of being really close to the latest spec, but right now the spec is undergoing versioned revision too. Niecza is an implementation of Perl6 which targets the CLR. Last I checked it lagged rakudo a bit but was still being updated and maintained. There are other, independent implementations of Perl6. There's STD.pm which implements Perl6 in Perl6 and uses viv to transliterate portions of itself into Perl5. Pugs is last I checked dormant, but it was an independent implementation of Perl6 in Haskell. So if someone asks for an implementation of Perl6, they probably want rakudo. Just like if someone asks about an implentation of Ruby they probably want CRuby / MRI unless they for some reason don't. Ruby, however, doesn't really have a language spec so other Ruby implementations like JRuby chase MRI compatibility. This was a problem with Perl5 which was defined by its primary implementation. Python has the Python Language Reference for alternate implementations like IronPython and Pypy to develop against, much like the R5RS and R6RS Scheme documents. This is why Perl6 the language is defined by the spec - so multiple implementations can compatibly exist.

cogman10 7y ago

Here's the difference. If I said "what's an implementation of Common lisp?" You'd say SBCL. If I Said "What's an implementation of C" you'd say GCC. If I said "What's an implementation of Javascript?" You'd say V8, Spidermonkey, etc. When I ask "What's an implementation of Perl6" The answer is "Nothing implements perl 6, isn't that wonderful!" It used to take forever diving around to find something that could run some subset of perl 6, usually with the disclaimer of "This isn't really perl 6, but rather a language that seems like perl 6" And you'd get the same thing from the mailing lists/etc.

dragonwriter 7y ago
> When I ask "What's an implementation of Perl6" The answer is Rakudo (compiler) and Rakudo Star (full distribution). Both of which have been production-ready since shortly after the Perl 6.c spec release in December 2015. Your rant would be understandable back before there was a stable spec, especially long before when the in-process language description and the various implementations were sometimes far apart. But it's been years since it had even a remote resemblance to reality.
- mkozlows 7y ago
  When a project has been going on for decades, things that have only changed in the last few years are not going to be immediately and obviously understood by people. The legacy of confusion and weirdness around the Perl 6 project is a legit problem, even/especially if it's no longer true and now Perl 6 is like a normal language.
  - cestith 7y ago
    This feeds directly back into the decision to delineate Perl6 from Perl with a new name.
cestith 7y ago
Right now rakudo with MoarVM is for all intents and purposes the main implementation of Perl6. The rakudo frontend also works with the JVM. There's work to make it work with JavaScript as a backend. It is in a continual state of being really close to the latest spec, but right now the spec is undergoing versioned revision too. Niecza is an implementation of Perl6 which targets the CLR. Last I checked it lagged rakudo a bit but was still being updated and maintained. There are other, independent implementations of Perl6. There's STD.pm which implements Perl6 in Perl6 and uses viv to transliterate portions of itself into Perl5. Pugs is last I checked dormant, but it was an independent implementation of Perl6 in Haskell. So if someone asks for an implementation of Perl6, they probably want rakudo. Just like if someone asks about an implentation of Ruby they probably want CRuby / MRI unless they for some reason don't. Ruby, however, doesn't really have a language spec so other Ruby implementations like JRuby chase MRI compatibility. This was a problem with Perl5 which was defined by its primary implementation. Python has the Python Language Reference for alternate implementations like IronPython and Pypy to develop against, much like the R5RS and R6RS Scheme documents. This is why Perl6 the language is defined by the spec - so multiple implementations can compatibly exist.