Slashdot Mirror
Exegesis 7 Released (Perl 6 Text Formatting)
chromatic writes "Perl.com has just published Exegesis 7, Damian Conway's explanation of how text formatting will work Perl 6 (and now, Perl 5, thanks to his Perl6::Form module) will work. Think of it as Perl 1 for the 21st century. Also, Parrot 0.1.0, the virtual machine for Perl 6 and several other dynamic languages, released on Leap Day -- ever wanted to program in an object oriented assembly language?"
One of the reasons I love Perl (cut my teeth with Perl 4, now write a lot of Perl 5 code) is that it is a virtual swiss army knife of programming languages. There is a lot of power in there, but you can choose to use only as much as you might need. The "TMTOWTDI" ethos also appeals to me. And, in reading the updates on Perl.com, I see that this exact same spirit is going into the creation of Perl 6.
.NET announcements and said, "Hmmm...multiple programming languages that all compile down to the same bytecode and execute in the same virtual machine...sounds like a reasonable idea to me!" The Parrot VM is a neat idea, that goes even further than .NET since it's multi-platform, and definitely will be very nice when it's finished. But I feel like it's going to delay Perl 6. And as nice as Perl 5 is, languages like Python and PHP are beginning to surpass it in feature set and ease of use. I don't want Perl 6 to be irrelevant when it finally shows up.
So why am I worried? Well, it feels like Larry saw Microsoft's
Also, like a very impatient, immature kid on December 23, I want my Perl 6 now, damnit!
But, I trust the Perl 6 team. They're smart people. Read the newsgroups and the forums, and you'll agree. When Perl 6 and Parrot are ready for prime-time, I am pretty sure that I won't be looking over at Python and PHP and feeling guilty anymore.
Ah well, back to coding...
Blogging Weight Loss, Distance Education, and more at verlin.com
You know, I'm not very big on perl coding, but I do really like the language. Your point about never having gone with the best methods of coding is something I noticed however.
I too wouldn't put perl as a "technically" best way to code ANYTHING, but it is however an intensely easy and powerful set of hacks, joined together quite well, and with a consistency that matches my own disorganised brain!.
I'm good for that. Getting something technically 'correct' in the coding world seems to me to be revolved around far more efficient use of resources and cpu speed than perl does. In my job however we have thousands of fast PCs, and only so many good coders. I go for whatever supports the coders, and for many of us that's perl
webalizer stats. thousands served monthly
I know you are trying to be humorous and all... However, I feel this needs to be said...
:)
With Perl, you can make the script/program/module as beautiful as you want, or as ugly as you want. Just to contrast with Java, Java forces you to be verbose -- very verbose. People claim that it makes them productive and it leads to maintainable code, but too much verbose code can be very confusing. With Perl, you have a choice of coding style, but there is no choice with respect to verbosity in Java.
There are places where clear, concise expression is useful. The tradeoff is that the readers have to have the vocabulary to comprehend what is written. Very few people complain "Gee, that guy writes in complex language, it is unreadable." Likewise, reading well written Perl code requires some familiarity with Perl.
Regarding how things look to unfamiliar people, try to look at a screenful of the most beautiful poetry (just pick a language that you are not familiar with -- may be Chinese, some Indian language), and then look at Perl code
S
Then there are the practical issues - will Parrot be fast enough and mostly bugless in time for Perl 6 to sit on top of it? I am concerned that we will need eighteen months of point releases and we haven't even had an alpha yet. Meanwhile people are looking at Ruby, Python, Mono/C# etc.
I recommend they just wrap up whatever concepts they have now and start moving toward an alpha. If we don't see one in 2004 I think most people will have moved on.
... ever wanted to program in an object oriented assembly language? ...
God no. It's bad enough when a high level compiler attemps to guess what you want (C++, etc)... it'd be horrid if ya had to have something supposedly machine level guess...
That's what Parrot is. Python and Ruby (as two examples) WILL be able to target parrot and run in the parrot VM.
Those are the promises of Parrot developers. It is however not that hard (but less wise) to get excited about promised values. It is better to get excited about delivered promises...
.net is barely limping along. Maybe there is more to this high failure rate...
Parrot is not the first try at this "execution machine" model, and I suspect not the last one either. The only ones that survived (so far) are the ones that target a single language. Python, Java comes to mind, while mono and
At the same time it would be really exciting to see the birth of the first SUCCESSFUL cross-platform execution machine...
Code poet, espresso fiend, starter upper.
Perl is the most beautiful language I've had the pleasure of learning. Lots of folks complain that perl must be ugly since it's so easy to write really butt-ugly code in it; but it's also very easy to write mindblowingly powerful, clear code. Enough thought has been put into the language design that you can abuse most aspects of the language and still get what you wanted.
It's easy to forget, when using perl, just how, well, tedious, it is to work in C (let alone C++) or shell or Java or even, yes, Python.
The exegeses so far have been full of fabulous goodies to use and abuse. The main problem, as others have pointed out, is that perl6 is still largely vaporware.
With Perl, you can make the script/program/module as beautiful as you want, or as ugly as you want. Just to contrast with Java, Java forces you to be verbose -- very verbose. People claim that it makes them productive and it leads to maintainable code, but too much verbose code can be very confusing. With Perl, you have a choice of coding style, but there is no choice with respect to verbosity in Java.
Other than your suggestion that Java code's "verboseness" makes it confusing, what you describe is exactly how things should be.
Java is highly maintainable precisely because it doesn't employ a "there's more than one right way to do it" approach. That is why it is so suitable to distributed projects, multi-programmer projects, and in fact, why it is used in a lot of large open-source projects.
Perl is a glue language designed to be used for short programs that perform useful tasks for an individual programmer. For such purposes, archaic structures and code conventions are perfectly acceptable. Can it be used for other things? Sure it can. COBOL can. PASCAL was. Doesn't mean that it is the best tool for the job, by the way.
Maintainable code isn't produced by a desire for self-expression. It is produced by following conventions. Java platform code has been described as "self-documenting" precisely because it lacks shortcuts that create obscurity. Of course, no code is REALLY self-documenting, but Java code comes darn close.
Please note that I am not knocking Perl. I use it myself and it is very useful for the things it does well. You should not, however, compare peas and apples. Perl is not comparable to Java. The languages are designed for different purposes and their structures and means of writing source for those languages reflect those differences. Perl was designed to be a super-shell language. Java was designed to be a net-ready systems and application programming language. Different purposes make for different languages and platforms.