3 ms·

What if it had taken Nintendo 35 years to release the next GameBoy, and they now came along and said: "Listen up, everybody! We finally did it! It has a 16 b

What if it had taken Nintendo 35 years to release the next GameBoy, and they now came along and said: "Listen up, everybody! We finally did it! It has a 16 bit processor now instead of 8 and 4 bit shades of green instead of 2, but it won't play any of your GameBoy games; you'll have to write new ones." -- If they did that, then being a hobby for a small number of true weirdos is the only way they could hope to fit into 2026. That's what Raku feels like to me.

layer8 3mo ago
Not everything needs to be a mainstream movement, and not being one doesn’t automatically make you a “true weirdo”.
- stakhanov 3mo ago
  Not everything, but languages do serve a purpose tied to how many (and which) people speak them, and that's true for general purpose programming languages in the same way as for human languages. If learning Klingon is someone's "thing" then, well, everyone can judge for themselves whether the predicate "true weirdo" applies or not, but it's descriptive enough.
  - DonHopkins 3mo ago
    Hey, Klingon is totally mainstream and has been for decades longer than Raku has been around. Andorian is what true weirdos speak.
  - everforward 3mo ago
    I would disagree, purely because the utility of a programming language doesn’t hinge on how many speak it. The goal of programming languages is to execute instructions on the machine. Brainfuck still executes machine code the same whether 2 people write it or it becomes the lingua Franca of AI. There’s fewer libraries, but C FFI bridges a lot of that. Learning Klingon is odd because human languages are meant for communication, so a language with no speakers is largely pointless (barring cultural value, which Klingon largely lacks because it’s a fictitious language and too modern to have that niche coolness).
    - stakhanov 3mo ago
      > The goal of programming languages is to execute instructions on the machine. The goal of a general purpose programming language is to communicate a program from one human to another, and from one human today to the same human tomorrow, while understanding that a program is only written once, but read many times. -- In that goal it is no different from a natural language. -- This goal needs to be optimized for within the constraint that programs must also compile and execute in the way and with the outcomes that a human reading the code would expect. Your observation about Brainfuck makes my point for me: If the execution was the actual goal, then Brainfuck would be as good a programming language as Rust, Zig, or Nim; but that clearly isn't the case.
librasteve 3mo ago
lol - I guess there is no defence for the long delays in getting Perl6 out of the door (2000-2015) and for sure that Osborned perl (5) and created a justified reaction from the perl community who wished that it had never happened. Thus the (slow) divorce with this being the decree nisi. Turns out that Larry (and the team) were much better at language design than project management. That said, since 2015 we have been blessed with an awesome new language.
- kamaal 3mo ago
  >>Turns out that Larry (and the team) were much better at language design than project management. It is true many times to deliver quality products you can't have deadlines. But without a deadline you are never finishing a thing. Unfortunately for Perl, Larry Wall, and several of its project leads(Patrick Michaud, Audrey Tang) at various times had major health issues. Time moves on, and people have to at times resign entirely from projects due to shifting priorities and personal problems. Parrot VM I guess went through a similar arc. Other people have moved mountains to get Perl going. But with time people's priorities have entirely moved on. At one time, all Python programmers would do is bad mouth Perl all over the internet, and that never really stopped. Any body who saw a Perl programmer do over a weekend, what they would take a year to do in their language(especially Java and Python)- had a deep rooted seething envy at Perl and Perl programmers. So they went around almost on religious crusade to have Perl gone. This was done entirely to crush competition. They just didn't want other people to wield a power they didn't have. Lisp has had a similar arc of development over the decades. Perl 5 development being entirely stopped for years further complicated this issue. Eventually as most of the Perl code in many companies bit rotted and died, newer projects were started in Python/Java. And of course Frontend stack entirely moved away to Node/React. We had mobile development of which Perl never was ever a part of. By the time ML/AI era came into being Python was defacto the language of programming for these kind of tasks. The best part is now in the LLM era, the whole idea of a programming language itself is pointless.
  - librasteve 3mo ago
    yeah to "deep rooted seething envy" and yes, LLM is moving HLL to a back seat - but not eliminating it entirely - otherwise, why not have your LLM emit ASM (or binary) fortunately Raku got enough https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/raku https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/raku and https://rosettacode.org/wiki/Category:Raku https://rosettacode.org/wiki/Category:Raku that it made the cut to be usable on LLMs so it is also (just) possible to argue that since the relevance and attention on the HLL you pick choice is diminished, now you can just pick one you like as opposed to sticking with the Python / Go / Rust straightjackets
embedding-shape 3mo ago
> What if it had taken Nintendo 35 years to release the next GameBoy More like Nintendo took 35 years to release the "VideoGameGirl", a product with a completely different name, and then suddenly a bunch of die-hard GameBoy fans are complaining that this separate product, even if it shares origin with the GameBoy, somehow doesn't even run games made for a different console. That's how this Perl/Raku navelgazing feels like to me.
- librasteve 3mo ago
  well the whole point of the rename is to sidestep the Perl vs. Raku navelgazing
  - embedding-shape 3mo ago
    Indeed, but I guess the Perl/Raku haters don't have anything of actual meat in their complaints, so off bike-shedding about the most trivial shit we go.
    - DonHopkins 3mo ago
      Larry Ellison should buy it, then there would be no need for technical arguments any more, just like Java. You could just say "lawnmower" to end the debate on ethical grounds.
    - stakhanov 3mo ago
      > Perl/Raku haters don't have anything of actual meat in their complaints For a random complaint of mine (one of many) see [1]. Using Perl as my main programming language for 3.5 years has given me plenty of "meat" to throw around; I just don't want to bore people with it, nor do I want to re-live the trauma. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42460014 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42460014
daneel_w 3mo ago
Are you saying this as a Perl programmer or as an observer who never wrote any Perl?
- embedding-shape 3mo ago
  Considering they're confusing Raku with Perl, I think it's a pretty safe bet they never coded with either.
  - stakhanov 3mo ago
    3.5 years of using Perl5 for 8 hours a day every day. I'd like to take the other side on more of your bets please ;-)
    - embedding-shape 3mo ago
      I forgot that some people purposefully go off-topic even though they actually do understand the topics :) Need to get better at expanding the bet options before I accept any more bets!

layer8 3mo ago

Not everything needs to be a mainstream movement, and not being one doesn’t automatically make you a “true weirdo”.

stakhanov 3mo ago
Not everything, but languages do serve a purpose tied to how many (and which) people speak them, and that's true for general purpose programming languages in the same way as for human languages. If learning Klingon is someone's "thing" then, well, everyone can judge for themselves whether the predicate "true weirdo" applies or not, but it's descriptive enough.
- DonHopkins 3mo ago
  Hey, Klingon is totally mainstream and has been for decades longer than Raku has been around. Andorian is what true weirdos speak.
- everforward 3mo ago
  I would disagree, purely because the utility of a programming language doesn’t hinge on how many speak it. The goal of programming languages is to execute instructions on the machine. Brainfuck still executes machine code the same whether 2 people write it or it becomes the lingua Franca of AI. There’s fewer libraries, but C FFI bridges a lot of that. Learning Klingon is odd because human languages are meant for communication, so a language with no speakers is largely pointless (barring cultural value, which Klingon largely lacks because it’s a fictitious language and too modern to have that niche coolness).
  - stakhanov 3mo ago
    > The goal of programming languages is to execute instructions on the machine. The goal of a general purpose programming language is to communicate a program from one human to another, and from one human today to the same human tomorrow, while understanding that a program is only written once, but read many times. -- In that goal it is no different from a natural language. -- This goal needs to be optimized for within the constraint that programs must also compile and execute in the way and with the outcomes that a human reading the code would expect. Your observation about Brainfuck makes my point for me: If the execution was the actual goal, then Brainfuck would be as good a programming language as Rust, Zig, or Nim; but that clearly isn't the case.

librasteve 3mo ago

lol - I guess there is no defence for the long delays in getting Perl6 out of the door (2000-2015) and for sure that Osborned perl (5) and created a justified reaction from the perl community who wished that it had never happened. Thus the (slow) divorce with this being the decree nisi. Turns out that Larry (and the team) were much better at language design than project management. That said, since 2015 we have been blessed with an awesome new language.

kamaal 3mo ago
>>Turns out that Larry (and the team) were much better at language design than project management. It is true many times to deliver quality products you can't have deadlines. But without a deadline you are never finishing a thing. Unfortunately for Perl, Larry Wall, and several of its project leads(Patrick Michaud, Audrey Tang) at various times had major health issues. Time moves on, and people have to at times resign entirely from projects due to shifting priorities and personal problems. Parrot VM I guess went through a similar arc. Other people have moved mountains to get Perl going. But with time people's priorities have entirely moved on. At one time, all Python programmers would do is bad mouth Perl all over the internet, and that never really stopped. Any body who saw a Perl programmer do over a weekend, what they would take a year to do in their language(especially Java and Python)- had a deep rooted seething envy at Perl and Perl programmers. So they went around almost on religious crusade to have Perl gone. This was done entirely to crush competition. They just didn't want other people to wield a power they didn't have. Lisp has had a similar arc of development over the decades. Perl 5 development being entirely stopped for years further complicated this issue. Eventually as most of the Perl code in many companies bit rotted and died, newer projects were started in Python/Java. And of course Frontend stack entirely moved away to Node/React. We had mobile development of which Perl never was ever a part of. By the time ML/AI era came into being Python was defacto the language of programming for these kind of tasks. The best part is now in the LLM era, the whole idea of a programming language itself is pointless.
- librasteve 3mo ago
  yeah to "deep rooted seething envy" and yes, LLM is moving HLL to a back seat - but not eliminating it entirely - otherwise, why not have your LLM emit ASM (or binary) fortunately Raku got enough https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/raku https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/raku and https://rosettacode.org/wiki/Category:Raku https://rosettacode.org/wiki/Category:Raku that it made the cut to be usable on LLMs so it is also (just) possible to argue that since the relevance and attention on the HLL you pick choice is diminished, now you can just pick one you like as opposed to sticking with the Python / Go / Rust straightjackets

embedding-shape 3mo ago

> What if it had taken Nintendo 35 years to release the next GameBoy More like Nintendo took 35 years to release the "VideoGameGirl", a product with a completely different name, and then suddenly a bunch of die-hard GameBoy fans are complaining that this separate product, even if it shares origin with the GameBoy, somehow doesn't even run games made for a different console. That's how this Perl/Raku navelgazing feels like to me.

librasteve 3mo ago
well the whole point of the rename is to sidestep the Perl vs. Raku navelgazing
- embedding-shape 3mo ago
  Indeed, but I guess the Perl/Raku haters don't have anything of actual meat in their complaints, so off bike-shedding about the most trivial shit we go.
  - DonHopkins 3mo ago
    Larry Ellison should buy it, then there would be no need for technical arguments any more, just like Java. You could just say "lawnmower" to end the debate on ethical grounds.
  - stakhanov 3mo ago
    > Perl/Raku haters don't have anything of actual meat in their complaints For a random complaint of mine (one of many) see [1]. Using Perl as my main programming language for 3.5 years has given me plenty of "meat" to throw around; I just don't want to bore people with it, nor do I want to re-live the trauma. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42460014 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42460014

daneel_w 3mo ago

Are you saying this as a Perl programmer or as an observer who never wrote any Perl?

embedding-shape 3mo ago
Considering they're confusing Raku with Perl, I think it's a pretty safe bet they never coded with either.
- stakhanov 3mo ago
  3.5 years of using Perl5 for 8 hours a day every day. I'd like to take the other side on more of your bets please ;-)
  - embedding-shape 3mo ago
    I forgot that some people purposefully go off-topic even though they actually do understand the topics :) Need to get better at expanding the bet options before I accept any more bets!