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Perl is an ex-parrot and Parrot won't change that all that much. It's worse than that. Rakudo developers declared Parrot deprecated (in favor of a new VM which

Perl is an ex-parrot and Parrot won't change that all that much. It's worse than that. Rakudo developers declared Parrot deprecated (in favor of a new VM which had yet to be written). That, of course, drove off all of the Parrot developers--see the decline in commits in March 2011: https://www.ohloh.net/p/parrot/commits/summary https://www.ohloh.net/p/parrot/commits/summary If Rakudo ever reaches a point of stable equilibrium where it's reasonable to think about creating libraries for it, P6 still faces an adoption cycle that's more difficult than that of Python 3. There's no plan for P6 to replace Perl (partly to avoid that adoption pain, for one, and partly because P6 has taken so long, there wouldn't be any Perl users remaining unless P6 had publicly changed its strategy). Python's transition hasn't been quick or easy, but it's gone much, much better than the P6 fiasco.

kamaal 12y ago
I won't comment on Parrot, because I know nothing of Parrot or Perl 6 internals. But from what I hear and read on the internet, the new VM, Moar VM is doing pretty good as a parrot replacement. P6 still faces an adoption cycle that's more difficult than that of Python 3. I don't see how, especially when p5 developers are saying they will continue to support p5 long after p6 is released. And p6 is such a far drift from p5 that you can almost call it a new language. And no one if their right frame of mind will re write all p5 software in p6. So it will be p6 for any new projects and p5 supported all along. There's no plan for P6 to replace Perl (partly to avoid that adoption pain, for one, and partly because P6 has taken so long, there wouldn't be any Perl users remaining unless P6 had publicly changed its strategy). From what I read(Again, I have no personal contributions or sources and I rely on what I read or hear on the internet) in http://jnthn.net/papers/2014-fosdem-perl6-today.pdf http://jnthn.net/papers/2014-fosdem-perl6-today.pdf [pdf] rakudo is very close to spec completeness. And bulk of the effort currently is implementing last bits of spec and improving the speed. Python's transition hasn't been quick or easy, but it's gone much, much better than the P6 fiasco. Python is hardly comparable with Perl 6. They just changed a print statement and iterators in Python 3. Perl 6 is a very different story completely altogether.
- kbenson 12y ago
  chromatic is hardly a simple bystander in this issue. He's been very public in his feelings towards P6 and how it's dealt with Parrot, from back when he was very involved with Parrot. I assume he thinks he's giving valid advice as to the whole P6/Parrot thing, but the visible vitriol leads me to believe there's definitely some emotional underpinnings as to his opinions. Which is a shame, he's one of the most insightful people I've ever followed (I miss his more frequent blogging at modernperlbooks.com, which I've followed since it's inception).
  - chromatic 12y ago
    Unless the Singularity has occurred and no one told me, everyone has emotions. I prefer, however, to discuss facts backed up by primary sources, such as the commit stats linked earlier or mailing lists or IRC logs. Do you have an opinion about the situation based on those?
    - kbenson 12y ago
      Of course. I'm not making some pie-in-the-sky assertion that arguments should be devoid of emotion, just that I had noticed what appeared enough emotion to overrule civil discourse in the past. That said, after re-reading your original comment, I don't see much to disagree on (except for one thing, which I'll cover later), and it doesn't seem to exhibit many of the problems I was alluding to, so you have my apologies. It was inappropriate of me to bring that up in this context. What I should have commented on was that Parrot was all but dead long before MoarVM put the last nail in the coffin. I doubt the announcement did much beyond cement what most developers already knew - Parot was not well suited for it's original purpose, whether you view that as a VM for P6 or a general purpose VM, specifically because for too long it had tried to follow both paths to the detriment of all. My impression of Parrot, as an outsider who consumed quite a bit of the public information available about parrot development, ended up being that Parrot was too experimental of a VM, and never moved beyond the stage of being a fun sandbox for developers to come experiment in. When P6 was still coalescing around how to implement what was in the spec (and revising the spec in light of that), this didn't matter much. As P6 increasingly moved towards an actual implementation, Parrot's misalignment with what P6 needed along with Parrot's deprecation policy caused many problems between the projects. I think at one point, prior to MoarVM being announced, there was still a chance Parrot could have been "saved". But by saved, I mean continue on as a sandbox for developers to experiment in, possibly without ever culminating in a VM that was useful as primary target for a language. If enough developers would have been willing to continue with this truth exposed (and I'm not sure enough would), then if Parrot and made the choice to continue as a "general purpose VM" instead of primarily a P6 target, it may have survived as a sandbox. I'm interested in your opinion on this interpretation - not because I think any of it is news to you, I'm sure it's not - but the opposite, in fact. This view is in no small part informed by your own writings on the subject over the years. P.S. I was completely serious before when I said I missed your more frequent posting on modernperlbooks.com. I hope that no matter what the future holds for you, that it also includes you writing about technical issues in blog or book form (and enjoying doing so!). I know you've helped solidify my thinking on a great many things over the years, to my great benefit.

kamaal 12y ago

I won't comment on Parrot, because I know nothing of Parrot or Perl 6 internals. But from what I hear and read on the internet, the new VM, Moar VM is doing pretty good as a parrot replacement. P6 still faces an adoption cycle that's more difficult than that of Python 3. I don't see how, especially when p5 developers are saying they will continue to support p5 long after p6 is released. And p6 is such a far drift from p5 that you can almost call it a new language. And no one if their right frame of mind will re write all p5 software in p6. So it will be p6 for any new projects and p5 supported all along. There's no plan for P6 to replace Perl (partly to avoid that adoption pain, for one, and partly because P6 has taken so long, there wouldn't be any Perl users remaining unless P6 had publicly changed its strategy). From what I read(Again, I have no personal contributions or sources and I rely on what I read or hear on the internet) in http://jnthn.net/papers/2014-fosdem-perl6-today.pdf http://jnthn.net/papers/2014-fosdem-perl6-today.pdf [pdf] rakudo is very close to spec completeness. And bulk of the effort currently is implementing last bits of spec and improving the speed. Python's transition hasn't been quick or easy, but it's gone much, much better than the P6 fiasco. Python is hardly comparable with Perl 6. They just changed a print statement and iterators in Python 3. Perl 6 is a very different story completely altogether.

kbenson 12y ago
chromatic is hardly a simple bystander in this issue. He's been very public in his feelings towards P6 and how it's dealt with Parrot, from back when he was very involved with Parrot. I assume he thinks he's giving valid advice as to the whole P6/Parrot thing, but the visible vitriol leads me to believe there's definitely some emotional underpinnings as to his opinions. Which is a shame, he's one of the most insightful people I've ever followed (I miss his more frequent blogging at modernperlbooks.com, which I've followed since it's inception).
- chromatic 12y ago
  Unless the Singularity has occurred and no one told me, everyone has emotions. I prefer, however, to discuss facts backed up by primary sources, such as the commit stats linked earlier or mailing lists or IRC logs. Do you have an opinion about the situation based on those?
  - kbenson 12y ago
    Of course. I'm not making some pie-in-the-sky assertion that arguments should be devoid of emotion, just that I had noticed what appeared enough emotion to overrule civil discourse in the past. That said, after re-reading your original comment, I don't see much to disagree on (except for one thing, which I'll cover later), and it doesn't seem to exhibit many of the problems I was alluding to, so you have my apologies. It was inappropriate of me to bring that up in this context. What I should have commented on was that Parrot was all but dead long before MoarVM put the last nail in the coffin. I doubt the announcement did much beyond cement what most developers already knew - Parot was not well suited for it's original purpose, whether you view that as a VM for P6 or a general purpose VM, specifically because for too long it had tried to follow both paths to the detriment of all. My impression of Parrot, as an outsider who consumed quite a bit of the public information available about parrot development, ended up being that Parrot was too experimental of a VM, and never moved beyond the stage of being a fun sandbox for developers to come experiment in. When P6 was still coalescing around how to implement what was in the spec (and revising the spec in light of that), this didn't matter much. As P6 increasingly moved towards an actual implementation, Parrot's misalignment with what P6 needed along with Parrot's deprecation policy caused many problems between the projects. I think at one point, prior to MoarVM being announced, there was still a chance Parrot could have been "saved". But by saved, I mean continue on as a sandbox for developers to experiment in, possibly without ever culminating in a VM that was useful as primary target for a language. If enough developers would have been willing to continue with this truth exposed (and I'm not sure enough would), then if Parrot and made the choice to continue as a "general purpose VM" instead of primarily a P6 target, it may have survived as a sandbox. I'm interested in your opinion on this interpretation - not because I think any of it is news to you, I'm sure it's not - but the opposite, in fact. This view is in no small part informed by your own writings on the subject over the years. P.S. I was completely serious before when I said I missed your more frequent posting on modernperlbooks.com. I hope that no matter what the future holds for you, that it also includes you writing about technical issues in blog or book form (and enjoying doing so!). I know you've helped solidify my thinking on a great many things over the years, to my great benefit.