Parrot 0.1.1 'Poicephalus' Released

Pan T. Hose writes "The long awaited release of Parrot 0.1.1 "Poicephalus" has been finally announced on perl.perl6.internals newsgroup and perl6-internals mailing list simultaneously by Leopold Toetsch followed by an announcement on use Perl by Will Coleda and now also on Slashdot." (Read on for a list of changes since the last release, as well as a number of useful links.) Pan T. Hose continues "The most important changes since the previous version 0.1.0 (code-named 'Leaping Kakapo' and released in February) are:

• Python support: Parrot runs 4/7 of the pie-thon test suite
• Better OS support: more platforms, compilers, OS functions
• Improved PIR syntax for method calls and <op>= assignment
• Dynamic loading reworked including a "make install" target
• MMD - multi method dispatch for binary vtable methods
• Library improvement and cleanup
• BigInt, Complex, *Array, Slice, Enumerate, None PMC classes
• IA64 and hppa JIT support
• Tons of fixes, improvements, new tests, and documentation updates

The amazing project which no one had any idea would go so far from the original April Fool's Joke by Simon Cozens (also posted on Slashdot on April 1, 2001) to really unite Perl and Python one day (not to mention Tcl, Scheme, Forth and Ruby, to name just a few) is now available for download from CPAN and via CVS. Those who are not up-to-date with Perl 6 mailing lists can read This Week in Perl 6 weekly summaries by Piers Cawley to have some idea on how's the project been going in the last two years. It's important to read Apocalypses, Exegeses and Synopses together with RFCs and Parrot Design Documents for better understanding of the underlying rationale, especially the superiority of register-based Virtual Machines (like Parrot VM) over stack-based one (like JVM) for modern (dynamically-typed) OO languages with multiple inheritance, operator overloading, traits, roles and much, much more. Parrot Docs, FAQ and examples are also very helpful. This is a very important step in the direction of Perl 6 which we are all looking forward to."

Comments

Reconciliation

[Camel Pilot]

Now can we have perl articles without every python weeny jumping up and down and shouting "perl sucks"?

oh yes and vice versa - I hope.

WTF is this?

[Meostro]

From reading the mini-summary of this wonderful new release, can anyone out there tell me what the hell this is?

NO! YOU CAN'T!

If you already know what it is, you could extoll its virtues to the world. If you know what it is, you probably already know about the new release and don't need to be told!. For the average /.er, my guess is they say "that's nice... whatever it is," and skip this one over.

Please, people: When you submit a story about the new release of XYZ version 12423 (stupid animal pseudonym here) put in at least some vague description of WTF it is!

For anyone who didn't RTFA, Parrot is apparently the bastard-child of Python and Perl, using/supporting elements of both languages. Perl is a ridiculous, intentionally obfuscated language, and a Python ate my sister, so I have no interest in this.