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You could do this in perl if you wanted to. For instance, you can code perl in Latin. It's done using the Filter::Util::Call module, which lets you preprocess your perl code. Read Damian Conway's discussion about it. He gives a simple example using Klingon keywords and talks about implementing a Switch function in perl.

They usually remain at a low level of features, as Free Software developers are a limited resource. There are exceptions (GIMP), but they usually have major companies behind them (Open Office, Mozilla) which know what the users want and what to ask from their developers.

Oh, so they usually have companies behind them, huh? You mean like Apache? Or NetBSD? Or the Linux kernel? Or Perl (which constantly seeks community donations)? How about the GNU software suite? Did you know that the lines of source code from GNU exceed the lines of source in the Linux kernel and the X Window System, and that's not counting emacs? How about XFree86; what company is behind that? What company is behind KDE? PostgreSQL has a company behind it now, but didn't for years, and that company still seems to be somewhat on the sidelines. And if you don't think PostgreSQL has features, start comparing its MVCC concurrency control system to Oracle's row-level locking, and ask yourself which supports more language in the database.

Actually, other than the two you mentioned, plus GNOME, most large free software projects seem to be done without a formal company backing them. The ones I listed above have plenty of companies driving them, as community members, just like everyone else, but none of them is identified with a particular company in my mind.

I remember people were saying that about London UK not so many years ago. That was back in 2000. Then my fellow London.pm members got their act together and organised one! And that was YAPC::Europe, and the rest is history as they like to say.

Of course, they got help from YAS. YAS is Yet Another Society designed to help people, amongst other things, set up their own conferences.

So, if there's no conference near you...why not try and hold your own? From what I saw, it wasn't easy, but everyone I know that was involved had a hell of a lot of fun.

See this link

That is not an accurate assessment. As this article illustrates, many real-world Perl 5 programs will port to Perl 6 with little (and sometimes no) changes required.

...if you look at the code that Damian Conway is generating, it's nothing like perl 5...

In Exegesis 5? Of course not. Because the Exegeses supposed to explain the Apocalypses, which are specifically about the differences between Perl 5 and Perl 6.

When I'm writing code to illustrate the similarities between the two, then the Perl 6 code looks very much like Perl 5.

The problem here is that you have a language being developed by a linguist, not a computer science guy.

Actually, no. Perl 5 was the language that was developed by a linguist, not a computer science guy. Perl 6 is the language being developed by a linguist and a computer science guy (amongst others).

The simple fact of the matter is, all of the grammar is changing.

No it's not. Not even close. Something less than 20% of the grammar is changing.

All of the keywords are changing.

Again, simply not true. Not one of the following keywords is changing: for, while, if, unless, until, goto, BEGIN, END, INIT, CHECK, DESTROY, bless, caller, chomp, close, defined, delete, die, exists, exit, fork, getc, goto, grep, index, int, join, keys, kill, last, lc, lcfirst, length, lstat, m//, map, my, next, no, open, ord, pack, package, pipe, pop, pos, print, printf, push, q//, qq//, quotemeta, qw//, qx//, rand, redo, require, reset, return, reverse, rindex, s///, scalar, seek, shift, sleep, sort, splice, split, sprintf, sqrt, sub, system, tell, tr///, uc, ucfirst, undef, unpack, unshift, use, values, vec, wait, warn, y///.

Those of us on the design team certainly understand that it can sometimes feel like Perl6 is nothing close to Perl 5, and like all the grammar and keywords are changing, and that the linguists are now running the asylum. But the reality is -- as usual -- considerably less fearsome, uncertain, or doubtful than our fears might lead us to believe.

Damian Conway will give a public talk at ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) on Monday, February 11th, 2002 at 17:00h.Everybody is welcome. Location: Departement of Information Technology and Electrical engineering, Gloriastrasse 35; Auditorium E6. http://www.ee.ethz.ch/events/index.en.html Abstract

Damian Conway will give a public talk at ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) on Monday, February 11th, 2002 at 17:00h.Everybody is welcome. Location: Departement of Information Technology and Electrical engineering, Gloriastrasse 35; Auditorium E6. http://www.ee.ethz.ch/events/index.en.html Abstract

Of course, Damian is paid by the Perl Community to do this cool stuff. We're still looking to make up the funding for the later half of this year. Want to donate? Get yourself across to the donations page

Of course, Damian is paid by the Perl Community to do this cool stuff. We're still looking to make up the funding for the later half of this year. Want to donate? Get yourself across to the donations page

Anyone interested in doing any type of quantum computing should check out Dr. Damian Conway's excellent Quantum::Superpositions. It is an extension to the perl language which adds the operators "any" and "all"... it's lets you do *incredible* things like:

use Quantum::Superpositions;

if ($x == any($a, $b, $c)) { ... }

while ($nextval < all(@thresholds)) { ... }

$max = any(@value) < all(@values);

A good place to go and discuss the in's and out's of the cooler aspects of the perl community is perlmonks.org, check it out some time...

With regard to O'Reilly and Perl, don't forget that ORA still donates to YAS, hosts Perl.com, purchasing and publishing articles and news, and employs or partially funds people involved with Perl -- Nat Torkington, Jon Orwant, Simon Cozens (editing Perl.com). They're also paying royalties to Larry, Tom Christiansen, Tim Bunce, Randal Schwartz, Doug McEachern, Lincoln Stein, Jarkko Hietaniemi, et al.

Finally, I might point out that Perl's fine documentation is both voluminous and very close to the Camel in many spots. Some of the same people who work on Perl books (writing and editing) work on the FAQ and the included POD.

It may not be as direct a donation to Perl development as when Larry was a direct patron, but I think the company is still doing Good things. There will always be free resources for people to use, but I have no problem supporting good publishers like O'Reilly and Manning. If someone can set up a trust to produce free-as-in-speech documentation, I'll support that project too.

Damian has set the bar very high in this regard--see the start of his 2002 schedule, and read his 2001 diary to see how much he gets around. While I doubt Larry and Dan will be travelling internationally as much as Damian, we do want them to visit user groups outside their home town.

In an ideal world, a conference would pay Larry to be Larry. Unfortunately, you might have noticed that this world isn't ideal. Larry has to pay his own way to conferences, just like everyone else.

--Nathan Torkington

Damian has set the bar very high in this regard--see the start of his 2002 schedule, and read his 2001 diary to see how much he gets around. While I doubt Larry and Dan will be travelling internationally as much as Damian, we do want them to visit user groups outside their home town.

In an ideal world, a conference would pay Larry to be Larry. Unfortunately, you might have noticed that this world isn't ideal. Larry has to pay his own way to conferences, just like everyone else.

--Nathan Torkington

Don't forget Damian Conway! It's another good opportunity to help Open Source (and Perl).

terrible color scheme

Try http://www.yetanother.org/damian/b+w/ instead.

Same great taste; less moody. ;-)

... with the money they make out of selling Perl books, they could easily fulfil a goodly part of the modest $55000 they talk about on this page. (Yes, I know 55k was the *2001* budget.)

But dunno how much people will be willing to fork out to charity during tough times.. last year this time, things were much better.

Although slashdot loves to post Damian Conway stories, those who still haven't had their fill can follow his online diary at yetanother.org.

Not that far actually... Damian Conway, author, amongst many other wonders, of Lingua-Romana-Perligata which lets you program in Latin, uses a module that does computation in Klingon in his OO classes and has written a module that let's you program entirely in Klingon!

The most interesting point in both Latin and Klingon is that the order of words in a sentence is not significant. Instead declensions are used to determine the role of the various tokens in an instruction: 9 declensions are used to mark whether the variable is a scalar (nextum), an array (nexta), a scalar being assigned to (nexto) etc...

BTW Damian also wrote Acme::Bleach, which turns your code into a file that apparently contains the single instruction use ACME::Bleach... but that still runs!

Yet Another Society(YAS) has put together the Yet Another Perl Conference for a couple of years now, which is low cost perl conference. It might be worth looking at what they have done with Perl and see if it could be applied to Apache.

If you're interested in quantum computing, try to check out Damian Conway's talk on the Perl module Quantum::Superpositions. It's very funny and actually quite useful!

Damian is travelling around the world talking to perl user groups. Check out his schedule to see if he's due to talk near you.

It is Amazing what a community can do when it pulls together and believe in something. I am glad to see this happen

Indeed it is. This in itself is part of the benefit that the Perl Community will gain from doing this, Damians undoubted good work notwithstanding, the realization that a community of like minded individuals with a common interest can achieve xomething that will benefit both themselves and others as yet unknown to them is in itself a good thing. The model that has been created here by YAS will begin to accrue benefits throughout the Open Source community, not simply limited to the Perl Programming language

A complete list of contributors can be found at http://yetanother.org/damian/contribs.html.