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

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

[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

[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 !

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;
}
}

wait... perl compiles??

[conan776]

that's new, right?

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

[ReverendHoss]

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

There goes my karma.

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.