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Ask HN: Is Perl 6 / Raku worth learning?

• Nextgrid 6y ago
  My strategy for deciding whether a language is worth learning is to ask yourself what problems is the language solving. My understanding is that Perl 6 has no major advantages over the other general-purpose languages and is fairly niche and I expect it to remain so. From a profitability standpoint, your time is better invested into getting better at whatever language you'er currently using or learn a new language that will give you more career opportunities. Learning a niche language that has no major selling points over the major existing languages is a pure waste of time that will never pay off.
  • lizmat 6y ago
    > Perl 6 has no major advantages - proper support for Unicode graphemes for example, a CRLF is a single grapheme in Raku - lots of syntax for handling parallelisation and concurrency promises, start blocks, react whenever, supplies - improved regular expressions and grammars whitespace insignificant, grammars are subclassable modules - improved maintainability in production envirionments multiple versions of a library can be installed at the same time and can be addressed from code separately, since all imports are always lexical To name but a few features that most other languages do not have.
  • b2gills 6y ago
    I fully expect that Raku will be as influential a language as Perl was before it. --- JavaScript has a `"use strict"` mode, that was copied from Perl5. PowerShell has a `$_` variable that was copied from Perl. Every language that has a regular expression engine that it comes with has Perl to thank/blame. --- Raku has a fair few neat ideas that it would be a shame if no one copied them into other languages.
• BruceEel 6y ago
  Interesting and +1 to the question, what do you guys think? I'm still planning to look into Perl 6. What I like about Perl 5.x is its high out-of-the box availability (ie: no need to ask sysadmin to allow/install Ruby, Node etc..), so I find ideal for some basic automation scripts. However, I have never really managed to get used to its (Perl 5's) syntax. I can create, initialize and iterate through a map/'hash table' in C++ without looking up the docs. Perl... is different, I have a hard time making its idioms stick. I am curious as to whether Perl 6 brings big changes syntax-wise and whether I can expect it to be overall more intuitive (not in general, but for this one programmer that is.)
  • lizmat 6y ago
    Too late to look into Perl 6 :-) It has been renamed to Raku (https://raku.org https://raku.org using the #rakulang tag on social media).
    • BruceEel 6y ago
      I stand updated! ;-)
  • b2gills 6y ago
    my %hash-table = ( abc => 1, def => 2, ); for %hash-table { say .key, ' => ', .value; } You can also use sub-signature deparsing. for %hash-table -> $ (:$key, :$value) { say "$key => $value" } That may take a while to get used to. You don't have to use it, but it is a very powerful feature so it is definitely worth learning. --- Really the most difficult thing seems to be that people aren't expecting Raku to be as consistent as it is. I think that is because most languages aren't. For example you may expect this to work for @array -> $element { say $element } but you wouldn't necessarily expect this to work if $var.method() -> $result { say $result } In fact all keywords of the form `KEYWORD CONDITION {BLOCK}` will work with a pointy block. You can also create a lambda using the same exact pointy block syntax. my &multiply = -> $a, $b { $a * $b } say multiply 4, 5; # 20 --- Also the signature part of a pointy block is exactly the same as a subroutine signature, and a method signature. You can even create an anonymous signature object. :( $foo, $bar ) (There aren't a lot of uses for it though.) --- I still get surprised sometimes with how consistent Raku is.
• lizmat 6y ago
  Raku would be an excellent choice for that, because programming in Raku can be fun, see e.g.: https://medium.com/linux-plus-plus/linux-may-10-2020-c095b6650af5#e2c6 https://medium.com/linux-plus-plus/linux-may-10-2020-c095b66... Don't expect to be able find a full-time job in Raku just yet. But more experienced developers will always be better paid than developers that haven't looked beyond their side of the hill.
  • electricant 6y ago
    Thanks for the reference. I'm not looking for a job, it's just for scratching my own itch.
• melezhik 6y ago
  Definitely it's worth a shot. You'll love the language. It's very expressive and flexible. The community is super friendly. If you're into more serious things, there are some projects you might like. For example cro - framework to develop web APIs. As for production readiness - I have used the language at my devops @job for a couple of years. Best. Aleksei
• zubenel0 6y ago
  Raku is cool if you want to learn some new paradigms that other languages might copy too. Perl would be a more suitable choice if you were looking for a language that might be used for job search right now.