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> I'm a little ignorant about Raku, so take my comments with a grain of salt, but... That makes two of us. Albeit, I began working with Raku in 2015, when it w

> I'm a little ignorant about Raku, so take my comments with a grain of salt, but... That makes two of us. Albeit, I began working with Raku in 2015, when it was still called Perl 6. What follows is just my opinion, so take my comments with a grain of salt. > Saying Raku is the future of Perl is like saying Objective-C is the future of C. This isn’t true. From the beginning, Perl 6 was always envisioned as the successor language to Perl 5. The reasons given for this were myriad: Perl 5 would benefit from having a more regular syntax (e.g. `$this{}` would become `%this{}`), a decideably parseable implementation [1], first-class OOP support in the standard library, as well as gradual typing and a concurrency/parallelism story, amongst many other things. Objective-C is more of a bolt-on addition to C. It’s less a separate programming language from C than it is a potentially useful paradigm for programming in C. Objective-C was never designed to “replace C” the way Perl 6 was designed to replace Perl 5. > and Raku didn't replace Perl. Well, it should’ve. Other than nostalgia attached to graybearded Perl developers of yore, you can see ITT the writing is on the wall for Perl 5. IMO Perl 5 looks clearly destined to the same fate as Sed and Awk: a CLI “power tool” — critical to infrastructure in unappreciated ways — but ultimately disposable and not a serious solution. Raku is to Perl 5 what Perl 5 is to Awk, IMO. In my view, it was deeply unfortunate certain loud minorities from Perl 5 were able to derail Perl 6, as if that would be the thing that could save Perl 5 from its destiny of utter irrelevancy. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5770531 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5770531

shagie 6y ago
While Raku was envisioned to be the successor to perl... I remember going to the Perl Conference back in '00 and thinking "Oh, Neat!" and being excited about Perl6. And I waited. And I waited. And I waited. The mindshare of improving perl5 and making it competitive with the emerging application servers and compelling for a web development platform rather than Java wained. Java became more and more useful over the next decade while perl5 remained static. People wrote some rather impressive libraries - but the mindshare wasn't there. Mod_perl in apache was useful... but BEA WebLogic was becoming more and more useful. Meanwhile, more and more features and major changes were slated to be part of perl6... and the release date felt more and more distant in the future for where I could actually get something to work in a production environment with perl6 and say to my manager "this should be what we target for new development." I had changed two jobs between first getting hired as a perl programmer and perl6 being released (though I pity anyone who would have tried to run perl6 in production in '15). So while Raku is neat... it really lost its mindshare of developers over two decades. The writing is on the wall for perl5 - I left that in '10 when I was hired as a Java developer rather than a Perl developer. But the writing is on the wall for Raku too - already. In '00 and even a few years later, there was still enough inertia to say "perl6 is out, lets move our stack from perl5 to perl6". Today? I don't see it. I think there would be a stronger push from perl5 to Java (or other JVM language) or Python depending on the shop. The last version of perl4 was in '93 when perl5 started work. Perl 5.000 was released October 17, 1994. 5.004 was in '99... and then the long dark time began as efforts for perl6. Four years later we got perl 5.6... and another five years for perl 5.8. Still no perl6. Raku won't replace perl5 because any place that perl5 is going to be replaced isn't likely going to move to Raku. The effort to move from perl5 to Raku is likely similar to the effort to move to Java, or Python, or Ruby... all languages with greater mindshare and developer stories (and Jetbrains IDEs). I've left perl. Any scripting that I do now is groovy which leverages my tooling in Java. In the "well it should have replaced perl5" - that boat sailed over a decade ago when the systems running perl were being migrated to other platforms and languages... and the developers lost faith, had their beards turn gray, and retired.
- microtherion 6y ago
  > The last version of perl4 was in '93 when perl5 started work. Perl 5.000 was released October 17, 1994. 5.004 was in '99... and then the long dark time began as efforts for perl6. Four years later we got perl 5.6... and another five years for perl 5.8. Still no perl6. Some of your dates are off a bit. 5.004 was in 1997, 5.6 in 2000, 5.8 in 2002, it was only 5.10 that took 5 years after that.
- raiph 6y ago
  > And I waited. And I waited. And I waited. I agree Raku took far, far too long to please those who waited. I'm sad that atweiden talks of Perl being disposable, especially in a thread about its future, and that they imply Raku is not destined for utter irrelevancy. I love both Perl and Raku, but irrelevancy is where we're all headed in the final analysis. That said: > The effort to move from perl5 to Raku is likely similar to the effort to move to Java, or Python, or Ruby... Fwiw: * You can use Perl libraries in Raku.[1] * You can use Perl features in Raku. * Raku has an excellent Jetbrains IDE.[2] * It has a rounded out developer story -- ecosystem, OS packaging, compiler releases, mass testing, stackoverflow knowledgebase, sophisticated profilers, debugger, and so on. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26575153 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26575153 [2] https://commaide.com/ https://commaide.com/
nickelcitymario 6y ago
Thanks for the context! There's a lot in here that I didn't know. That said, I do think that as soon as you rename a branch (example Perl 6 became Raku), it stops being a replacement. It's not even a branch at that point, it a fork. It's a new entity entirely, with all the pros and cons that this entails. If the goal was to replace Perl, it shoulda stuck with Perl 6 as the name. No?

shagie 6y ago

While Raku was envisioned to be the successor to perl... I remember going to the Perl Conference back in '00 and thinking "Oh, Neat!" and being excited about Perl6. And I waited. And I waited. And I waited. The mindshare of improving perl5 and making it competitive with the emerging application servers and compelling for a web development platform rather than Java wained. Java became more and more useful over the next decade while perl5 remained static. People wrote some rather impressive libraries - but the mindshare wasn't there. Mod_perl in apache was useful... but BEA WebLogic was becoming more and more useful. Meanwhile, more and more features and major changes were slated to be part of perl6... and the release date felt more and more distant in the future for where I could actually get something to work in a production environment with perl6 and say to my manager "this should be what we target for new development." I had changed two jobs between first getting hired as a perl programmer and perl6 being released (though I pity anyone who would have tried to run perl6 in production in '15). So while Raku is neat... it really lost its mindshare of developers over two decades. The writing is on the wall for perl5 - I left that in '10 when I was hired as a Java developer rather than a Perl developer. But the writing is on the wall for Raku too - already. In '00 and even a few years later, there was still enough inertia to say "perl6 is out, lets move our stack from perl5 to perl6". Today? I don't see it. I think there would be a stronger push from perl5 to Java (or other JVM language) or Python depending on the shop. The last version of perl4 was in '93 when perl5 started work. Perl 5.000 was released October 17, 1994. 5.004 was in '99... and then the long dark time began as efforts for perl6. Four years later we got perl 5.6... and another five years for perl 5.8. Still no perl6. Raku won't replace perl5 because any place that perl5 is going to be replaced isn't likely going to move to Raku. The effort to move from perl5 to Raku is likely similar to the effort to move to Java, or Python, or Ruby... all languages with greater mindshare and developer stories (and Jetbrains IDEs). I've left perl. Any scripting that I do now is groovy which leverages my tooling in Java. In the "well it should have replaced perl5" - that boat sailed over a decade ago when the systems running perl were being migrated to other platforms and languages... and the developers lost faith, had their beards turn gray, and retired.

microtherion 6y ago
> The last version of perl4 was in '93 when perl5 started work. Perl 5.000 was released October 17, 1994. 5.004 was in '99... and then the long dark time began as efforts for perl6. Four years later we got perl 5.6... and another five years for perl 5.8. Still no perl6. Some of your dates are off a bit. 5.004 was in 1997, 5.6 in 2000, 5.8 in 2002, it was only 5.10 that took 5 years after that.
raiph 6y ago
> And I waited. And I waited. And I waited. I agree Raku took far, far too long to please those who waited. I'm sad that atweiden talks of Perl being disposable, especially in a thread about its future, and that they imply Raku is not destined for utter irrelevancy. I love both Perl and Raku, but irrelevancy is where we're all headed in the final analysis. That said: > The effort to move from perl5 to Raku is likely similar to the effort to move to Java, or Python, or Ruby... Fwiw: * You can use Perl libraries in Raku.[1] * You can use Perl features in Raku. * Raku has an excellent Jetbrains IDE.[2] * It has a rounded out developer story -- ecosystem, OS packaging, compiler releases, mass testing, stackoverflow knowledgebase, sophisticated profilers, debugger, and so on. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26575153 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26575153 [2] https://commaide.com/ https://commaide.com/

nickelcitymario 6y ago

Thanks for the context! There's a lot in here that I didn't know. That said, I do think that as soon as you rename a branch (example Perl 6 became Raku), it stops being a replacement. It's not even a branch at that point, it a fork. It's a new entity entirely, with all the pros and cons that this entails. If the goal was to replace Perl, it shoulda stuck with Perl 6 as the name. No?