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I feel like I should know more about it since I spent so much time writing Perl in the 90's, contributing modules to CPAN, etc. It seemed like the de-facto lan

I feel like I should know more about it since I spent so much time writing Perl in the 90's, contributing modules to CPAN, etc. It seemed like the de-facto language for dynamic web sites for a while. I have to admit I never fully understand what Perl 6 was going to be. It seemed like it was going to be a language-agnostic runtime. Then it seemed to become a spec with no implementation. After a while I sorta lost track. Have things changed and Perl 6 is ready for production? Are there people building things with Perl 6?

FROGGS 13y ago
That really depends. If you need a richful module ecosystem then you won't be that lucky. But if your task would be doable with the many built-ins (and the modules shown on modules.perl6.org), then I'd say use it. I see that I am way more expressive and faster to solve tasks in Perl 6 then, say. Perl 5. (Besides I have to hack PHP at work in many cases. rant!) And yes, there are ppl who use it for production, but I am not sure that matters much when there tasks might be totally different to yours?
easytiger 13y ago
Without looking it up my recollection was that python 3000 and perl 6 would target parrot. I recall hacking on parrot back when it was new but now i doubt anyone I ever worked with uses perl6. Plenty of good reasons for all this. Language adoption requires stability or the appearance thereof.
rjzzleep 13y ago
reading the perl6 monthly logs perl seemed to stay true to it's swiss army chainsaw philosophy. it almost looked like almost every programming language feature you would think of would eventually end up in perl. ofc this was the idea i got a couple years back. but read kbd's comment below or the mailing someone else posted. http://lists.parrot.org/pipermail/parrot-dev/2013-February/007333.html http://lists.parrot.org/pipermail/parrot-dev/2013-February/0... parrot was to be the perl6 vm, but that never happened. it become too much at the same time so they tried to fork off parrot: > However, even if you remove the baggage and optimize for Rakudo (or rather NQP) integration, Perl6-on-Parrot will still be a 2nd-class citizen as long as no one replaces the PMC-based object system with 6model, which is imo a major undertaking; it might be easier to restart from scratch and fix other 'mistakes' along the way. That's where Parrot2 comes in so no i don't think perl 6 is ready for production. that said, i thought it was it a cool language. even though i'm not sure if there was a clear direction of where it was going.
- FROGGS 13y ago
  > that said, i thought it was it a cool language. even though i'm not sure if there was a clear direction of where it was going. Why are you using past tense? When you skim the last year here you cannot say that Perl 6 is dead: https://github.com/rakudo/rakudo/blob/nom/docs/ChangeLog https://github.com/rakudo/rakudo/blob/nom/docs/ChangeLog (Instead there are some exciting things to read there, at least exciting for me :o)
  - duaneb 13y ago
    Language features rank, for me, below language as community stability. That's why perl5 is a viable option: it's super stable and cpan is great.
kamaal 13y ago
Perl 6 isn't production ready in the same sense Perl 5 is production ready. But you can test bulk of the language features. Agreed that the stage of affairs are no way close what one describe as a commonly accepted definition of production ready. I won't give a timeline especially when I'm not working on it in any way. But I guess they are pretty close in making a production ready release.
crusso 13y ago
Perl6 reminds me of the BeOS clones out there. It makes me nostalgic and I want to click on the links to see what is going on with it... but ultimately it seems like it will never amount to much. Perl, BeOS, Amiga, etc. had their time. They were really cool in what they accomplished in their day, but most of us moved on.
- herokusaki 13y ago
  Are there any BeOS clones besides Haiku?
  - yebyen 13y ago
    Any living ones? There was Zeta Neo from YellowTab, they sold CDs for a period of time and I got one. There's this section on Wikipedia if you want to look into it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeOS#Continuation_and_clones http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeOS#Continuation_and_clones
    - herokusaki 13y ago
      I wouldn't call Zeta any more a clone of BeOS than eComStation is a clone of OS/2. It used the same codebase.
skywhopper 13y ago
Perl 6 is what happens when you try to rewrite a long-established and mature piece of software from scratch--that is: it's going to take years longer than you planned, it won't be remotely backwards compatible, it probably won't even do the same stuff, and it will end up souring lots of people on the old and new versions. I've seen it happen time and again.
- FROGGS 13y ago
  Exactly. So you always have two choices: 1) Just update a little step by step. Here you would keep your userbase until there is a piece of software after a decade that will take a high percentage of that userbase. 2) Do a rewrite that takes three times longer than planned and split your userbase in half for the old and the new version. You can just pray that the new version is worth it. So in a sense you will do the wrong and the right thing at once.

FROGGS 13y ago

That really depends. If you need a richful module ecosystem then you won't be that lucky. But if your task would be doable with the many built-ins (and the modules shown on modules.perl6.org), then I'd say use it. I see that I am way more expressive and faster to solve tasks in Perl 6 then, say. Perl 5. (Besides I have to hack PHP at work in many cases. rant!) And yes, there are ppl who use it for production, but I am not sure that matters much when there tasks might be totally different to yours?

easytiger 13y ago

Without looking it up my recollection was that python 3000 and perl 6 would target parrot. I recall hacking on parrot back when it was new but now i doubt anyone I ever worked with uses perl6. Plenty of good reasons for all this. Language adoption requires stability or the appearance thereof.

rjzzleep 13y ago

reading the perl6 monthly logs perl seemed to stay true to it's swiss army chainsaw philosophy. it almost looked like almost every programming language feature you would think of would eventually end up in perl. ofc this was the idea i got a couple years back. but read kbd's comment below or the mailing someone else posted. http://lists.parrot.org/pipermail/parrot-dev/2013-February/007333.html http://lists.parrot.org/pipermail/parrot-dev/2013-February/0... parrot was to be the perl6 vm, but that never happened. it become too much at the same time so they tried to fork off parrot: > However, even if you remove the baggage and optimize for Rakudo (or rather NQP) integration, Perl6-on-Parrot will still be a 2nd-class citizen as long as no one replaces the PMC-based object system with 6model, which is imo a major undertaking; it might be easier to restart from scratch and fix other 'mistakes' along the way. That's where Parrot2 comes in so no i don't think perl 6 is ready for production. that said, i thought it was it a cool language. even though i'm not sure if there was a clear direction of where it was going.

FROGGS 13y ago
> that said, i thought it was it a cool language. even though i'm not sure if there was a clear direction of where it was going. Why are you using past tense? When you skim the last year here you cannot say that Perl 6 is dead: https://github.com/rakudo/rakudo/blob/nom/docs/ChangeLog https://github.com/rakudo/rakudo/blob/nom/docs/ChangeLog (Instead there are some exciting things to read there, at least exciting for me :o)
- duaneb 13y ago
  Language features rank, for me, below language as community stability. That's why perl5 is a viable option: it's super stable and cpan is great.

kamaal 13y ago

Perl 6 isn't production ready in the same sense Perl 5 is production ready. But you can test bulk of the language features. Agreed that the stage of affairs are no way close what one describe as a commonly accepted definition of production ready. I won't give a timeline especially when I'm not working on it in any way. But I guess they are pretty close in making a production ready release.

crusso 13y ago

Perl6 reminds me of the BeOS clones out there. It makes me nostalgic and I want to click on the links to see what is going on with it... but ultimately it seems like it will never amount to much. Perl, BeOS, Amiga, etc. had their time. They were really cool in what they accomplished in their day, but most of us moved on.

herokusaki 13y ago
Are there any BeOS clones besides Haiku?
- yebyen 13y ago
  Any living ones? There was Zeta Neo from YellowTab, they sold CDs for a period of time and I got one. There's this section on Wikipedia if you want to look into it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeOS#Continuation_and_clones http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeOS#Continuation_and_clones
  - herokusaki 13y ago
    I wouldn't call Zeta any more a clone of BeOS than eComStation is a clone of OS/2. It used the same codebase.

skywhopper 13y ago

Perl 6 is what happens when you try to rewrite a long-established and mature piece of software from scratch--that is: it's going to take years longer than you planned, it won't be remotely backwards compatible, it probably won't even do the same stuff, and it will end up souring lots of people on the old and new versions. I've seen it happen time and again.

FROGGS 13y ago
Exactly. So you always have two choices: 1) Just update a little step by step. Here you would keep your userbase until there is a piece of software after a decade that will take a high percentage of that userbase. 2) Do a rewrite that takes three times longer than planned and split your userbase in half for the old and the new version. You can just pray that the new version is worth it. So in a sense you will do the wrong and the right thing at once.