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This is my first time hearing about Raku (the language this tool is apparently written in), and after a quick look at the website[1], I am not sure why I would

This is my first time hearing about Raku (the language this tool is apparently written in), and after a quick look at the website[1], I am not sure why I would want to use Raku vs any other language in particular. According to the guide[2]: > Raku is a high-level, general-purpose, gradually typed language. Raku is multi-paradigmatic. It supports Procedural, Object Oriented, and Functional programming. That really doesn't tell me enough. Anyone else have any idea why I might want to use Raku vs one of the many other langs to which those adjectives can be applied? [1] https://docs.raku.org/ https://docs.raku.org/ [2] https://raku.guide/#_what_is_raku https://raku.guide/#_what_is_raku

adr1an 3y ago
RegEx probably, since raku is perl 6 afaik.
- dartos 3y ago
  Yeah it’s basically a language purpose made for matching text
  - gmueckl 3y ago
    It has evolved to be much, much more. It is a somewhat pragmatic, powerful, malleable multi-paradigm language that can be (has been) applied to many use cases beyond text processing. I am only vaguely familiar with the language, but I'm often impressed by examples of it's power and expressiveness.
PhilipRoman 3y ago
Raku is a Perl descendant so it's goals are the same as Perl's (for the most part). From what I've seen it is supposed to be a terse language for rapid prototyping, it has syntax support for a lot of common idioms (and of course since it came from Perl you can expect some of the best pattern matching support in the world). For me the performance is a dealbreaker, but otherwise it looks pretty good.
- melezhik 3y ago
  The are lot of tasks that don’t require performance, so if you are not going to write embedded / real-time system - you should be fine
nsrahmad 3y ago
I really like this post about Raku: "Raku : A Language for Gremlins" https://buttondown.email/hillelwayne/archive/raku-a-language-for-gremlins/ https://buttondown.email/hillelwayne/archive/raku-a-language...
- msla 3y ago
  A good bit of Raku looks like a language construction kit: Build your own little language, using Raku as a huge bag of tools.
- pizzalife 3y ago
  Wow, that looks absolutely horrible.
kristopolous 3y ago
raku is perl 6, it's just called "raku" now. Given that, it's 23 years old and done by Larry Wall so it's not exactly yet another fly-by-night hype language, just something that is not in the top 50.
- lloeki 3y ago
  > raku is perl 6 It used to be, but not anymore. It has grown to be its own thing with some happenstance parenthood through being born from an early attempt at Perl 6, and thus is now only being slightly more related to Perl than e.g Ruby is. Ok I'm pushing it but you get the idea: taking a biological analogy, it has mutated away far enough that it is now considered to be its own strain. And if that helps clear some doubts, Perl 7 is on the table (if there ever needs to be a Perl 7): At some point in the future, the PSC may decide that the set of features, taken together, represent a big enough step forward to justify a new baseline for Perl. If that happens, then the version will be bumped to 7.0. https://blogs.perl.org/users/psc/2022/05/what-happened-to-perl-7.html https://blogs.perl.org/users/psc/2022/05/what-happened-to-pe... So Raku cannot be Perl 6!
  - kristopolous 3y ago
    Well right, "perl 6" quickly became a bad name for the project - they should have switched to something like "raku" maybe 20 years ago. Given that, nobody got the memo, so calling it "perl 6" is still a very fast way to orient people as to what it's a neighbor of.
    - cduzz 3y ago
      It's what happens when Larry Wall says "Hold My Beer" to ruby?
    - 2colours 3y ago
      Maybe a fast way but is it a fair or even helpful way, if you recognize that it "quickly became a bad name for the project"?
msla 3y ago
The big thing Raku offers is grammars as a built-in language feature: https://docs.raku.org/language/grammar_tutorial https://docs.raku.org/language/grammar_tutorial > Regular expressions (Regexes) work well for finding patterns in strings. However, for some tasks, like finding multiple patterns at once, or combining patterns, or testing for patterns that may surround strings regular expressions, alone, are not enough. > When working with HTML, you could define a grammar to recognize HTML tags, both the opening and closing elements, and the text in between. You could then organize these elements into data structures, such as arrays or hashes.
zokier 3y ago
To me the first adjectives that come to mind for Raku are quirky and clever. I feel it can be extremely expressive at times, with really good happy path. It is at the same time anti-blub but also steers away from academic ivory towers, instead it is very much hacker/power-user oriented. (disclaimer: I don't actually know Raku that well, but it is very high on my list of languages to learn)
melezhik 3y ago
Because it provides one with a lot of flexibility out of the box while not forcing you into a specific programming style and without any additional overhead or costs … OOP, functional programming, strong/dynamic typing, declarative /imperative - you’ve got it, we got you covered

adr1an 3y ago

RegEx probably, since raku is perl 6 afaik.

dartos 3y ago
Yeah it’s basically a language purpose made for matching text
- gmueckl 3y ago
  It has evolved to be much, much more. It is a somewhat pragmatic, powerful, malleable multi-paradigm language that can be (has been) applied to many use cases beyond text processing. I am only vaguely familiar with the language, but I'm often impressed by examples of it's power and expressiveness.

PhilipRoman 3y ago

Raku is a Perl descendant so it's goals are the same as Perl's (for the most part). From what I've seen it is supposed to be a terse language for rapid prototyping, it has syntax support for a lot of common idioms (and of course since it came from Perl you can expect some of the best pattern matching support in the world). For me the performance is a dealbreaker, but otherwise it looks pretty good.

melezhik 3y ago
The are lot of tasks that don’t require performance, so if you are not going to write embedded / real-time system - you should be fine

nsrahmad 3y ago

I really like this post about Raku: "Raku : A Language for Gremlins" https://buttondown.email/hillelwayne/archive/raku-a-language-for-gremlins/ https://buttondown.email/hillelwayne/archive/raku-a-language...

msla 3y ago
A good bit of Raku looks like a language construction kit: Build your own little language, using Raku as a huge bag of tools.
pizzalife 3y ago
Wow, that looks absolutely horrible.

kristopolous 3y ago

raku is perl 6, it's just called "raku" now. Given that, it's 23 years old and done by Larry Wall so it's not exactly yet another fly-by-night hype language, just something that is not in the top 50.

lloeki 3y ago
> raku is perl 6 It used to be, but not anymore. It has grown to be its own thing with some happenstance parenthood through being born from an early attempt at Perl 6, and thus is now only being slightly more related to Perl than e.g Ruby is. Ok I'm pushing it but you get the idea: taking a biological analogy, it has mutated away far enough that it is now considered to be its own strain. And if that helps clear some doubts, Perl 7 is on the table (if there ever needs to be a Perl 7): At some point in the future, the PSC may decide that the set of features, taken together, represent a big enough step forward to justify a new baseline for Perl. If that happens, then the version will be bumped to 7.0. https://blogs.perl.org/users/psc/2022/05/what-happened-to-perl-7.html https://blogs.perl.org/users/psc/2022/05/what-happened-to-pe... So Raku cannot be Perl 6!
- kristopolous 3y ago
  Well right, "perl 6" quickly became a bad name for the project - they should have switched to something like "raku" maybe 20 years ago. Given that, nobody got the memo, so calling it "perl 6" is still a very fast way to orient people as to what it's a neighbor of.
  - cduzz 3y ago
    It's what happens when Larry Wall says "Hold My Beer" to ruby?
  - 2colours 3y ago
    Maybe a fast way but is it a fair or even helpful way, if you recognize that it "quickly became a bad name for the project"?

msla 3y ago

The big thing Raku offers is grammars as a built-in language feature: https://docs.raku.org/language/grammar_tutorial https://docs.raku.org/language/grammar_tutorial > Regular expressions (Regexes) work well for finding patterns in strings. However, for some tasks, like finding multiple patterns at once, or combining patterns, or testing for patterns that may surround strings regular expressions, alone, are not enough. > When working with HTML, you could define a grammar to recognize HTML tags, both the opening and closing elements, and the text in between. You could then organize these elements into data structures, such as arrays or hashes.

zokier 3y ago

To me the first adjectives that come to mind for Raku are quirky and clever. I feel it can be extremely expressive at times, with really good happy path. It is at the same time anti-blub but also steers away from academic ivory towers, instead it is very much hacker/power-user oriented. (disclaimer: I don't actually know Raku that well, but it is very high on my list of languages to learn)

melezhik 3y ago

Because it provides one with a lot of flexibility out of the box while not forcing you into a specific programming style and without any additional overhead or costs … OOP, functional programming, strong/dynamic typing, declarative /imperative - you’ve got it, we got you covered