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Perl 6 Released (wordpress.com)
Earlier this month, we noted the Perl 6 advent calendar. Now, an anonymous reader writes to note that, right on schedule, and after 15 years of work, Perl 6 has been released. The top two bullet points in the linked description say that the newest Perl "retains the core values of Perl: expressiveness, getting the job done, taking influences from natural language, and pushing the boundaries of language design," and
that is "has clean, modern syntax, rooted in familiar constructs but revisiting and revising the things that needed it." However, while it's nice to see Perl 6 reach official release, the team behind it takes pains to note that work goes on: "We will continue to ship monthly releases, which will continue to improve performance and our user’s experience." Further, "[T]his Rakudo release is not considered the primary deliverable for this Christmas; it is the language specification, known as “roast” (Repository Of All Spec Tests), that is considered the primary deliverable."
First post,
I love Perl
This is my opinion based on what little I know and understand of the rumors and lies Thanks, Randal
Yawn. The world has moved on. I used Perl 15 years ago but Perl 6 has taken far too long. Why should I use it now over anything else?
It's April Fools already! The older I get, the faster time flies by, I swear...
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
One thing that caught my eye was this:
Non-digit unicode characters with a numeric value (½ and such) can now be used for that numeric value
and
Provide tau constant (also: )
(There's a Unicode tau there that slashdot won't pass)
I've seen this in Emacs LISP, but I haven't seen it elsewhere (granted, I mostly use older languages...). I imagine non-ASCII characters in code are going to be a point of contention among developers.
Related:
Superscripts can now be used for integer powers
I haven't payed much attention to Perl 6 (I use Perl 5 for a lot, though), but now I'm looking forward to playing with this.
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
Yo yo hipster web developers. The new rockstar language is Erlang reborn aka Outlaw Techno Psycobitch which you can write hipster low 16 color flat modern impress your cat applications and websites!!
Perl and Ruby on rails is sooo last decade man for crusty developers
http://saveie6.com/
The Perl 6 Architect writes about the 7-8 years work put in to get this far at https://6guts.wordpress.com/20...
"In the coming days, weâ(TM)ll also produce a Rakudo Star release â" which consists of the compiler along with documentation and a selection of modules â" and that will also have an MSI, to make life easier for Windows folks."
There will also be perl 6 speedups in a series of monthly releases next year.
A good starting point with download instructions and docs links is
http://perl6.org/downloads/
Have fun!
I'm sure I'll bump into it eventually. I think Perl comes installed with everything. I don't remember the last time I actually installed it. It probably comes default on Toaster Linux.
~$ perl --version
This is perl 5, version 20, subversion 2 (v5.20.2) built for x86_64-linux-gnu-thread-multi
(with 51 registered patches, see perl -V for more detail)
Copyright 1987-2015, Larry Wall
I'm pretty sure I did not install that. If I need something quick and dirty (I don't) then I guess it's always there. I'd remove it but I know that if I do, I'll think of a reason to use it. I'm trying to learn Python now. It has been too long since I've done much coding - except in PHP and not even that for seven or eight years. I am in the process of picking it back up and that means relearning a bunch of stuff and a whole lot of new stuff. Perl will be in there eventually - even if just a refresher.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I use perl daily, still. It's kinda fun, and while no one was looking, it got to be fast and pretty bug-free, along with well, CPAN. Perl 6 evidently tossed the language and runting optimized into one another for the JRI...and fixed what wasn't broke - it really didn't need any more syntactic sugar. I use perl 5.xx in my Lan of things as it's quick to program and is even fairly fast on small cpus - as in raspi and friends. 6 won't match that, and I don't have time to learn new quirks.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
repost
Perl Festivity Level 1: Developers and users have gathered to nibble hors d'oeuvres and chat amiably with each other about the Modern Perl Renaissance. With every sip of their drinks Perl seems ever more striking. Some are gathered around the upright piano improvising songs that proclaim how it is faster, neater, and sharper than ever before with its asynchronous APIs.
Perl Festivity Level 2: Everyone is talking loudly -- sometimes to each other, and sometimes to nobody at all. Perl seems even better. Perl Monks are patiently explaining syntax and style to potted plants and other nearby objects. Around the piano people are feeling fun and flexible, just as programming in scripting languages used to be. Someone is crooning a bawdy ballad where a couple of inexperienced DOM and CSS selectors encounter a very supportive bundled development server.
Perl Festivity Level 3: Monks are arguing violently and defrocking one another over nested do...until loops that bail on exceptions. People are gulping down other peoples' drinks, placing hors d'oeuvres in the upright piano to see what happens when the little hammers strike as everyone bawls "Got my Mojolicious workin' ... but it don't work on Python!" They have lost count of their drinks, and the world is harmonious with blissful adherence to modern interfaces and standards.
Perl Festivity Level 4: All the guests, hors d'oeuvres smeared all over their naked bodies are performing a ritual dance around a burning heap of tables and chairs in celebration of postfix dereference syntax, subroutine signatures, new slice syntax and numerous optimizations. The piano is missing.
~~ with apology and deference to Dave Barry
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Perl 6 has not been released "after 15 years of work". It has been marred by one disaster after another. It has been released after 15 years of failure.
Those who have been following its development then entire time will remember the Parrot virtual machine shenanigans, which wasted many years, and prevented a usable Perl 6 implementation from becoming available.
Then there was the Pugs implementation of it, which actually seemed slightly promising at first. That, of course, turned into a disaster when the lead programmer decided to change his gender. (I'm not even joking!)
There's also Perl 6's absurd logo, which renders Perl 6 unusable in any serious environment. We'd be laughed at if we showed the Perl 6 home page to managers, executives or clients when advocating for the use of Perl 6. They'd think we were pulling their leg by using a language with such a childish logo.
Lately the focus has been on Rakudo which has taken years to produce something even minimally useful. I've read reports that it's slow and forces you to use some obscure MoarVM they've created (this sounds to me like they're on the road to another Parrot-style failure!) or the JVM.
Perl 6 has been a shameful episode in the history of programming languages. It's even worse that it has permanently tainted the Perl name.