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Yes, indeed. It is really pleasant compared to how it was 10 years ago, and still -- code written 10 years ago, even code written 25 years ago still runs in mo

Yes, indeed. It is really pleasant compared to how it was 10 years ago, and still -- code written 10 years ago, even code written 25 years ago still runs in modern browsers. It's amazing and wonderful. JavaScript has quite effectively managed to avoid anything the Perl 6 fiasco which greatly contributed to Perl's demise, or the Python 2 => 3 timult, which turns out will not be a kiss of death, but made for some rough years. JavaScript did almost have its own trouble of the same sort with ES4, but it was very wisely abandoned when it turned out to be too ambitious/contentious...

GuB-42 5y ago
I wouldn't call Perl6/Raku a fiasco. I don't actively use it but I followed it. It is actually a more modern language than pretty much anything else and it seems to have great community that is not a bunch of zealots. Also, it is far from dead. At the same time Perl5 is also still alive and from the start, it was clear that the two will be maintained in parallel. Perl6 was not intended to replace it, they changed the name to Raku to clarify the situation. So while it may be a fiasco if you consider the market share, it clearly isn't for the language. Perl5 doesn't really need change, and if you want to change it anyways, it would be for a whole new language, and that's exactly what happened.
- ketzo 5y ago
  I dunno. If you walked into a sophomore-level computer science lecture 15 years ago, most of the people there would either have heard of Perl or be proficient in it themselves. Now? I'd be amazed if a single student had written a line of Perl, or ever heard of Raku. That simply doesn't compare to where Python, Java, or even PHP are in the popular mind, IMO. I would call that something of a fiasco, frankly. Market share is everything for a programming language. The game isn't zero-sum, but it's close; there's only so many developers with so many hours to create libraries, guides, new software.
- sevrinsky 5y ago
  Speaking as a long-time Perl monger (Perl5 has been 80%+ of my day job for most of the last 25 years): Perl6 was definitely a fiasco that contributed to Perl5's demise. The active support in the ecosystem was divided between the "two Perls" and sapped the driving forces in the community. Perl5, like any other language, needs constant maintenance and growth in order to interact with modern tools and frameworks. For example, Protobuf and gRPC only work with a particular module (Google::ProtocolBuffers::Dynamic) which requires an arcane series of dependencies. Remember that a language is much more than just the semantics and the batteries-included libraries with the core. On the module and community side, Perl has been in free fall for the last decade.
merb 5y ago
> Yes, indeed. It is really pleasant compared to how it was 10 years ago, and still -- code written 10 years ago, even code written 25 years ago still runs in modern browsers. It's amazing and wonderful. sadly that is not true. some stuff broke over the years. most often it was not javascript itself but changes in the dom api.

GuB-42 5y ago

I wouldn't call Perl6/Raku a fiasco. I don't actively use it but I followed it. It is actually a more modern language than pretty much anything else and it seems to have great community that is not a bunch of zealots. Also, it is far from dead. At the same time Perl5 is also still alive and from the start, it was clear that the two will be maintained in parallel. Perl6 was not intended to replace it, they changed the name to Raku to clarify the situation. So while it may be a fiasco if you consider the market share, it clearly isn't for the language. Perl5 doesn't really need change, and if you want to change it anyways, it would be for a whole new language, and that's exactly what happened.

ketzo 5y ago
I dunno. If you walked into a sophomore-level computer science lecture 15 years ago, most of the people there would either have heard of Perl or be proficient in it themselves. Now? I'd be amazed if a single student had written a line of Perl, or ever heard of Raku. That simply doesn't compare to where Python, Java, or even PHP are in the popular mind, IMO. I would call that something of a fiasco, frankly. Market share is everything for a programming language. The game isn't zero-sum, but it's close; there's only so many developers with so many hours to create libraries, guides, new software.
sevrinsky 5y ago
Speaking as a long-time Perl monger (Perl5 has been 80%+ of my day job for most of the last 25 years): Perl6 was definitely a fiasco that contributed to Perl5's demise. The active support in the ecosystem was divided between the "two Perls" and sapped the driving forces in the community. Perl5, like any other language, needs constant maintenance and growth in order to interact with modern tools and frameworks. For example, Protobuf and gRPC only work with a particular module (Google::ProtocolBuffers::Dynamic) which requires an arcane series of dependencies. Remember that a language is much more than just the semantics and the batteries-included libraries with the core. On the module and community side, Perl has been in free fall for the last decade.

merb 5y ago

> Yes, indeed. It is really pleasant compared to how it was 10 years ago, and still -- code written 10 years ago, even code written 25 years ago still runs in modern browsers. It's amazing and wonderful. sadly that is not true. some stuff broke over the years. most often it was not javascript itself but changes in the dom api.