perl6-compiler Mailing List Started

horos2c writes "Well, it looks like perl6 has reached the point where development on the compiler has started. The perl6-compiler list has been started, and has a total of 55 messages so far, as of this posting, and there's a large thread on perl6's current status."

Comments

uh-huuuuuuuu!!!!!!

[BinLadenMyHero]

perl -e 'print "first post! :)\n";'

Re:uh-huuuuuuuu!!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

fore!

perl -le 'print"first post! :)"'

Ruby - Perl 6 now

[Zeroth_darkos]

Forget Perl 6. I want a Ruby compiler for Parrot. Anyway Perl 6's VM, Parrot, is a more important accomplishment than Perl 6, the language.

Re:Ruby - Perl 6 now

[Colonel Panic]

Forget Perl 6. I want a Ruby compiler for Parrot. Anyway Perl 6's VM, Parrot, is a more important accomplishment than Perl 6, the language.

Indeed. And Ruby seems to be what Perl 6 aspires to be. Seriously, look at the list of features being added to Perl 6 and you get the idea that they're being heavily influenced by Ruby. They even have the idea of the 'Ruby-meter' in the Perl 6 community; as in how well does a particular proposed feature score on the 'Ruby-meter', so even they seem to think of Ruby as the benchmark.

BTW: If you're looking for a Ruby frontend for Parrot, why not jump in and help us make one? The project is called
Cardinal

Ruby: Because I can't wait until Perl 6 is finished

Re:Ruby - Perl 6 now

[Anonymous Coward]

Ruby: Because I can't wait until Perl 6 is finished

Shouldn't that be: Ruby: Because Perl 6 frightens me. A lot.

Re:Ruby - Perl 6 now

[Chester K]

Anyway Perl 6's VM, Parrot, is a more important accomplishment than Perl 6, the language.

I used to follow Parrot's development closely, with great interest. Then I found Mono. Say what you will about Microsoft, but they designed a kickass VM; and there's a fully functional 1.0-level open source version of it available today. And as the author of IronPython adequately demonstrated, it works just fine for dynamic scripting languages.

In my opinion as a one-time Perl6/Parrot devotee, it's taken too long. By the time it ships, it'll be irrelevant. And, like it or not, Parrot's ultimate fate will likely be tied to Perl6, even though they're seperate projects; and Perl as a language is on a decline. The places where it used to be the only choice are rapidly being eroded by other, arguably better choices. Python for system administration tasks, and PHP (yeech, I know, but most of the time you only need the Tonka truck of languages) for web applications. Perl still reigns supreme for reporting, but honestly --- how often do you do that?

That's not even getting into the fact that Parrot seems to be being built around academic ivory-tower design concepts, like continuations, that seem spiffy-keen at first glance, but probably won't see that much usage in reality. (Perl6 suffers the same problem with the extreme focus on neato features with limited practical usefulness, like superpositions.)

Why should I use Parrot instead of Mono? Why should I use Perl6 instead of Python/PHP?

Re:Ruby - Perl 6 now

[Anonymous Coward]

So does this mean Sun and the Java team get credit too? Since large parts of C# VM design is borrowed from java. While I'm at it, it should also give thanks to smalltalk and all the other OOP languages that contributed to the design of Java, which begate C#.

Give credit where credit is due.

Re:Ruby - Perl 6 now

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I think that the Ruby-o-meter is not necessarily a good thing. As I recall, certain features were denigraded by Larry/Dan/chromatic as scoring too high on the Rubyometer. There's no point in doing something just because that's how Ruby does it.

Remember, Perl isn't supposed to be the "cleanest" language, or most orthogonal, or anything like that. For example, relying on whitespace as syntax would score high on the Pythonometer, but that wouldn't be considered a good thing.

Re:Ruby - Perl 6 now

[chromatic]

Hm, I can't think of any of those features now, unless it was how Ruby handles adding methods to an instance. I like Ruby, but it has pieces I don't like.

On the other hand, I do remember objecting to the Rubyometer on occasion when the invocant has failed to pay homage to the source of Ruby's inspiration. Maybe that's what you had in mind.

Re:Ruby - Perl 6 now

[CatGrep]

This is interesting: here we have a Perl 6 story and there are more comments about Ruby than about Perl 6.

It does seem as though Perl has become rather passe these days. Is Perl considered 'so '90's' now as to be irrelevant? Has Perl 6 missed it's opportunity window? Maybe if they would have had it done a year or two ago it would have still been able to generate some buzz, but now it would appear that the people who wanted major improvements to the language (especially OO features) have moved on to other languages like Ruby.

How about:
Ruby: Because I'll be retired by the time Perl 6 is eventually finished

OR:
Ruby: It's not vapor

Re:Ruby - Perl 6 now

[tree_frog]

OK, a couple of things that should be cleared up here (as a Rubyist of 4 years standing)

1. VMs are different strokes for different folks. yes, the .NET VM (and the Mono VM) are very fine pieces of work. But they are designed for statically typed languages. Perl, Python and Ruby are all dynamically typed, and the Parrot VM is specifically designed for dynamically typed languages.
2. Continuations are really rather spiffy useful things. Take a look round comp.lang.ruby at some point, there is a very good (and amusing) explanation of how you might wish to use one here

Best regards,

treefrog

Re:Ruby - Perl 6 now

[straybullets]

In my opinion as a one-time Perl6/Parrot devotee, it's taken too long. By the time it ships, it'll be irrelevant. And, like it or not, Parrot's ultimate fate will likely be tied to Perl6, even though they're seperate projects; and Perl as a language is on a decline

Well that is a point of view, althought what i see in my workplace is that Perl is being more and more used as a tool for small/medium projects, and it is script language number one on windows. I wonder how long it will take for ruby to achieve the same position.

I have to say that Python never did catch on here. I saw it in another job but it was kept to a very small part on a big C++ project.

I don't know of any admin using python or ruby for admin task ! It's either shell, perl, or C since i on 3000 Unix servers i guess i can't count with my fingers the ones where ruby is installed !

Re:Ruby - Perl 6 now

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not even getting into the fact that Parrot seems to be being built around academic ivory-tower design concepts, like continuations, that seem spiffy-keen at first glance, but probably won't see that much usage in reality.

A Chester K Clone, circa 1990: "That's not even getting into the fact that Java seems to be being built around academic ivory-tower design concepts, like garbage collection and 'everything is an object', that seem spiffy-keen at first glance, but probably won't see that much usage in reality."

Some news for you: continuations are mainstream. The ivory tower concepts nowadays are things like arrows and dependent types -- and if you've seen any of the neat things those are capable of, you'd be begging Larry to put them into Perl6...

Re:Ruby - Perl 6 now

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

In my opinion as a one-time Perl6/Parrot devotee, it's taken too long. By the time it ships, it'll be irrelevant.

This is known technically as "C++ syndrome". :-)

On the other hand, I don't see many dramatic advances in the other popular scripting languages either. I've picked up quite a bit of Perl over the past few years -- some of us do use it for reporting :-) -- and I've taken a look at both Python and Ruby on several occasions during that time, too. Every time, my underwhelmed reaction was: "Wow, another scripting language, but what does it offer that I don't already have?"

That's not to say that the alternatives aren't good, or that some people won't prefer them. Personally, I prefer languages to restrict punctuation to enhancing readability and keep the cryptic shorthand to specific cases like regexes or string formatting. IOWs, I'm a natural fan of things like Python and functional programming languages, and I think Perl tends to go too far. Other people go for OO in a big way, so they're likely to prefer Ruby. But I guess my answer to this...

Why should I use Perl6 instead of Python/PHP?

...is "Why shouldn't you?" Nothing else has yet developed far enough beyond Perl to merit conversion if you already know the latter, so why switch "just because"?

Re:Ruby - Perl 6 now

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should I use Parrot instead of Mono?

How many more Anti-Trust suit fixes must be fixed before an Anti-Trust suit fixes?

Why should I use Perl6 instead of Python/PHP?

There are rumors that Parrot could remove the restriction of only one at run time.

I want continuations.

I'd like a sandbox too, something Mono can't offer (either?).

Re:Ruby - Perl 6 now

[CatGrep]

I especially like this part from the link about continuations:

For a more in-depth look at continuations, see "Run, Lola, Run", "The
Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time", and "Back to the Future: Part II"

Re:Ruby - Perl 6 now

[davegaramond]

Python for sysadmin tasks? Blech. You need at least twice the number of characters to type Python snippet than Perl's, on average. With so many typing to do in CLI, you'd definitely want a terse language. Besides, Python is not really suitable to type at the command line (with that whitespace thingy and the limited command-line options). You really will prefer a language that can be specified on the command line as much as possible (e.g. when doing remote SSH commands, etc).

As for PHP, I really pity the people who prefers PHP (and even thinks it's the greatest thing since the sliced bread). Sure, it works, kinda, but I don't enjoy coding in PHP. PHP for work, Ruby for fun.

Re:Ruby - Perl 6 now

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, Larry says it best: "Perl is not terribly worried about where it fits on the Rubyometer. Ruby will need to worry about where it fits on the Perlometer." (http://www.mail-archive.com/perl6-language@perl.o rg/msg14358.html)

As evidenced by "P.S. I think we deserve a $rubyometer-- for bypassing mixins." (http://www.mail-archive.com/perl6-all@perl.org/ms g32930.html), I think it's safe to say that nobody is particularly happy about overly-high Rubyometer readings.

Re:Ruby - Perl 6 now

[jonadab]

> Seriously, look at the list of features being added to Perl 6 and you get
> the idea that they're being heavily influenced by RubySeriously, look at
> the list of features being added to Perl 6 and you get the idea that
> they're being heavily influenced by Ruby

When the Ruby people look at Perl6, they see Ruby. When the Scheme people
look at Perl6, they see Functional Programming. When the Smalltalk people
look at Perl6, they see Smalltalk. Indeed, all of these have contributed
heavily to the design of Perl6 (though, none as much as Perl5). Perl is
fundamentally a multiparadigmatic language. The Perl community actively
hunts down other languages and takes their nifty features. We're not just
getting vastly improved OO -- we're also getting *much* better FP, and
other things as well.

But it's true that Parrot is a really cool thing about Perl6 and, indeed,
running on Parrot is going to be the most important feature of every language
that runs on Parrot, because running on Parrot will get you the ability to
easily use libraries written in any language that runs on Parrot. The best
very feature of Perl5 is the CPAN, and in Perl6 it's going to be a whole lot
better.

Re:Ruby - Perl 6 now

[alessio]

This is interesting: here we have a Perl 6 story and there are more comments about Ruby than about Perl 6.

This is Slashdot, you know...

Re:Ruby - Perl 6 now

[Anonymous Coward]

It's because the Ruby people threadcrap all over other language discussions.

It appears they are so insecure about ruby that they feel the need to talk about it all the time, even when other languages are being discussed.

If Ruby is good, people will use it. It doesn't need a teenage chearing section.

Hmm.

[rincebrain]

Work on a PERL 6 compiler has started.

Guess I'd better start learning PERL, lest I be left behind with the rush of people who discover PERL in a year or two when the compiler comes out.

A (forked?) PHP port to Parrot before Perl ships?

[Anonymous Coward]

Parrot!!!

Forth is up. Is Python ready?

PHP real soon now?

This is great news

[egarland]

It's about time perl6 the language started taking shape. Hopefully it will live up to the hype. Parrot sounds like a great platform on which to build a language and I really like some of the things I've read about perl6 the language. It reamains to be seen how good the threading model will be though. Perl5 recently got semi-usable threading but because it was a retrofit, it has proven a little tough to use. I'm hoping perl6's will be designed to work better with things like mod_perl.

let the monkeys do the work

[BinLadenMyHero]

#!/usr/bin/perl
use Magic::Perl6::CompilerTester;

my $target = "/usr/bin/perl6";
my $try = 0;

print "generating perl6 compiler. this may take a while...\n";

while(1) {
my $lenght = int rand 8*1024*1024;
my $rc = "/tmp/perl6-rc$try";
system("dd if=/dev/random of=$rc bs=1 count=$lenght");
if(perl6_compiler_test($)) {
rename $rc $target;
print "perl6 compiler succesfully generated at $target\n";
last;
}
else {
unlink $rc;
}
}

Re:let the monkeys do the work

[numbski]

#!/usr/bin/perl

while($user eq "Anonymous Coward"){
whap(); whap(); whap(); whap(); whap();
}

Re:let the monkeys do the work

[Anonymous Coward]

I was going to write the Reply All Perl Threads Must Have: "-w, use strict, unnecessary double quotes, etc."

But then I read your sig, smiled, and didn't have the heart. :-)

wait... perl compiles??

[conan776]

that's new, right?

Re:wait... perl compiles??

[hummassa]

New as in 1990.
Come on, perl compiles since... since... ohboy... a long time ago. get over it. :-)

Periodic Table of the Perl 6 Operators

[cpeterso]

The Periodic Table of the Perl 6 Operators sheds light on just how scary Perl 6 will be. Don't forget: Perl is "easy" to learn!

Re:Periodic Table of the Perl 6 Operators

[straybullets]

The Periodic Table of the Perl 6 Operators sheds light on just how scary Perl 6 will be.

Hey, I think it's fun, nice and usefull :)

Re:Periodic Table of the Perl 6 Operators

[ReverendHoss]

Pfft, all languages are easy to learn. All languages are also a PITA to master. Perl is no different.

There goes my karma.

MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a really cool link. Here's the text:

Ok, the basics of continuations:

A continuation (in theory) represents "the rest of the program" from the
point that it's created. Imagine you're walking down the street and you
come to a fork in the road. You don't know whether to go left or right,
so you generate a "continuation".

Road
Left-or-right?
generate a continuation called "choice"
| \--Go left
| |---walk around
| |---find a mean dog
| \---get bitten by the mean, terribly hungry dog
| \---that wasn't a good idea.
| \---tell "choice" that left was a bad idea
|
|----according to "choice", left was a bad idea
\----let's go right instead.

Now, the real magic of continuations happens when you have more than one
of them.

Say when you got bitten by the dog, you generated another continuation
called "got bitten", before telling "choice" that left was a bad idea.

So, you're walking along, un-bitten, since you went right at the fork in
the road after all, and suddenly you're hit by an oncoming train.

You decide that getting bitten by the dog was preferable to this, so you
kindly ask the continuation named "got bitten" to take you back to the
alley where you were lying bleeding from the dog bite, but at least
hadn't been hit by a train. ;-)

The moral of the story: When in doubt, just stay home.

For a more in-depth look at continuations, see "Run, Lola, Run", "The
Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time", and "Back to the Future: Part II" :-)

OO features

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Maybe if they would have had it done a year or two ago it would have still been able to generate some buzz, but now it would appear that the people who wanted major improvements to the language (especially OO features) have moved on to other languages like Ruby.

That's kind of an odd example, because "everything is an object" is only an approximation, and IME it's only a good enough approximation to offer any benefits in medium-large developments. We're talking about languages principally used for scripting purposes here, a different world entirely.

I hope Perl isn't going to try and turn into a large-scale, OO-crazy development language. We've already got several of those, and all them are much more suited to the task than Perl.

Re:OO features

[Anonymous Coward]

It already did. I don't know if you noticed, but it was called Perl 5. The new Perl 6 is a great cleanup of that mess.