The Perl 6 Advent Calendar

An anonymous reader writes "Larry Wall wasn't joking when he said that Perl 6 would be ready by Christmas. Perhaps not this Christmas, but that hasn't stopped a group of people (including head Rakudo developers Patrick Michaud and Jonathan Worthington) from putting together an Advent Calendar, featuring one cool Perl 6 feature every day until Christmas. Topics currently covered include how to get and build Rakudo (the most actively developed and progressed implementation of Perl 6) and the new Metaoperators. For those wondering when Perl 6 will be finished: Rakudo will be having its official 'production release' (dubbed Rakudo Star) April 2010."

Comments

Re:This has taken too long

[Trepidity]

More than that--- Perl 6 was announced 9 1/2 years ago! Even O'Reilly's Perl 6 Essentials is now 6 1/2 years old, and some Perl 6 books are into 2nd editions.

Re:This has taken too long

[RDW]

Perl 6 is a new language, not just an upgrade. Perl 5 has not been neglected, and continues to receive updates and new features (some of them originally developed for Perl 6). The plan is to continue Perl 5 support and development indefinitely, irrespective of the status of Perl 6. And of course Perl 5 has its own advent calendar, which this year focuses on interesting stuff you can do with various CPAN modules:

http://www.perladvent.org/2009/

Re:still relevant?

[jepaton]

Yes, Perl is still relevant to a number of software developers and systems administrators.

It is an ideal language for software developers who want to use metaprogramming techniques (code generation; domain specific languages), text processing or data conversion, or automation of software development process. Perl 6 will have a full grammar engine (for parsing - like having YACC/BISON built in) which will make text processing even easier than before. The use of a scripting language for these tasks leaves the source code more accessible than compiled languages, which is an advantage to software developers who can adapt the code more readily than a compiled project.

Whether Perl 6 will be used much for primary software development I don't know. My day job is C programming for embedded systems where Perl is not suitable. Desktop programming is more likely to be in C++ or C# where the standard libraries are huge and the software development ecosystem is more developed.

The primary audience for new Perl, in my opinion, is expert software developers who need a powerful/succinct language to implement solutions to problems in the manner they think. Perl 6 therefore supports just about every programming paradigm known to mankind. What makes Perl great for software gurus is what makes it an awful language for programming newbies.

I will be learning Perl 6, not because I will use it much, but because I will discover new ways to think about problems. Oh, and it'll be fun.

Jonathan Paton

Re:perl 5 versus ruby versus perl 6

[plasticsquirrel]

Why would anyone want to use a glorified VB clone? I am sick and tired of seeing 'rock-star' Python and Ruby programmers trying to shove the new shiny toy in everyone's face. People have been using Perl for 20+ years, and they'll still be using it for 20+ years after Ruby and Python are a distant memory.

Why would anyone want to use a glorified Unix Shell? I am sick and tired of seeing 'rock-star' Perl programmers trying to shove the new shiny toy in everyone's face. People have been using Lisp for 50+ years, and they'll still be using it for 50+ years after Perl is a distant memory.

Now get off my lawn.