4 ms·

> there's a usable alpha, ready to download and use right now. Back in 2004 we had to choose the programming language for a new project. PHP5 (which was just r

by nimbix 12y ago

> there's a usable alpha, ready to download and use right now. Back in 2004 we had to choose the programming language for a new project. PHP5 (which was just released at the time) was the top candidate, but I really wanted to use Perl6 which a lot of people were very enthusiastic about and whose weekly mailing list updates made it look like an early partially usable version which could be used for staring the project was just around the corner. In the end we went with PHP. 10 years later it looks like we made he right decision. I realize that a lot of factors contributed to Perl6 being this late, including several cases of plain old bad luck, bit I still can't help being disappointed that the language I thought would be the next big thing might not get much use at all...

bane 12y ago
> Perl6 which a lot of people were very enthusiastic about and whose weekly mailing list updates made it look like an early partially usable version which could be used for staring the project was just around the corner. If there's one thing that I would point to about why Perl is no longer a popular language, this is it. I too remember all the hubub and excitement. I think I even have a copy of the O'Reilly Perl 6 Essentials somewhere waiting for a v1.0 to come out any day now. Perl 6 should have really been a staged release. v1.0 will have this, 2.0 will have this, etc. As languages age they add new features and this wouldn't have been viewed as odd at all. But there are people who have gone from middle-school to millionaire in the time it's taken for a non-alpha Perl 6 to make it out the door.
fleitz 12y ago
Ground up rewrite failed? So surprised.
xorcist 12y ago
You would have gone with a language that was not released yet? Two years later you would have gone with PHP6? A more realistic approach would have been to compare PHP5 with Perl5, where the latter would offer a migration path to Perl6 if it had become popular. (Not only had Perl5 compared favorably back then, the core of the language has been stable, deployment looks similar and there has been much fewer security issues with the language itself.)

by nimbix 12y ago

bane 12y ago

> Perl6 which a lot of people were very enthusiastic about and whose weekly mailing list updates made it look like an early partially usable version which could be used for staring the project was just around the corner. If there's one thing that I would point to about why Perl is no longer a popular language, this is it. I too remember all the hubub and excitement. I think I even have a copy of the O'Reilly Perl 6 Essentials somewhere waiting for a v1.0 to come out any day now. Perl 6 should have really been a staged release. v1.0 will have this, 2.0 will have this, etc. As languages age they add new features and this wouldn't have been viewed as odd at all. But there are people who have gone from middle-school to millionaire in the time it's taken for a non-alpha Perl 6 to make it out the door.

fleitz 12y ago

Ground up rewrite failed? So surprised.

xorcist 12y ago

You would have gone with a language that was not released yet? Two years later you would have gone with PHP6? A more realistic approach would have been to compare PHP5 with Perl5, where the latter would offer a migration path to Perl6 if it had become popular. (Not only had Perl5 compared favorably back then, the core of the language has been stable, deployment looks similar and there has been much fewer security issues with the language itself.)