Aha! So even Larry Wall admits Perl is all "gobbledygook"! This does not bode well for Perl 6.
As a matter of fact, it does bode well for Perl 6.
Even very well, I might add.
As Larry Wall has said in his famous
State of the Onion speech
on TPC4:
"Perl 5 was my rewrite of Perl. I want Perl 6 to be the community's rewrite of Perl and of the community."
Also, please let me quote the first Apocalypse:
"What I will be revealing in these columns will be the design of Perl 6. Or more accurately, the beginnings of that design, since the design process will certainly continue after I've had my initial say in the matter. I'm not omniscient, rumors to the contrary notwithstanding. This job of playing God is a little too big for me. Nevertheless, someone has to do it, so I'll try my best to fake it. And I'll expect all of you to help me out with the process of creating history. We all have to do our bit with free will."
Now, I can assure you that those four years were not wasted
as you seem to imply.
I think Larry Wall
has used the right words on OSCON 2003:
I haven't been following perl 6 too closely, is there any word on if Perl will be getting rid of the multi dimensional array hack of having to use references? This is something that dates back to Perl 4. It could have been fixed in Perl 5 but was the whole references thing was introduced for backwards compatability. But so much is changing in Perl 6 anyway it would be nice to be able to do things like @array[6][4][2][5][6] = "whoa!"
Common Lisp. Enough Said. Okay maybe Scheme, if you're a bit of a masochist...
Everyone is right here.
There is no one language which is best for everyone.
Perl 5, Perl 6, Ruby, Python, Lisp, Scheme...
They are all going to target
Parrot
so we will be able to choose our favourite language
and still work together
instantiating our objects
and even inheriting from each other's classes
crossing the cross-language boundaries.
A very impressive work has already been done
in the 0.1.0 "Leaping Kakapo" version of Parrot.
See: Parrot FAQ
and the languages directory in the CVS.
Excuse me but
I believe this story
should be on the front page, should it not?
I am sure everyone will agree with me.
We all have been waiting for that Apocalypse
for over a year now
(since March 7, 2003, to be precise).
Furthermore, this is undoubtedly
one of the most important Apocalypses.
Am I the only one who thinks that
the future of computing as we know it is
at least a little bit more important
than some satellite TV pirates
or the daily SCO Stock update?
I believe this story was not posted on the front
page due to an errour.
I expect it to be corrected by the Slashdot
editors as soon as possible.
Thank you.
In the name of the entire Slashdot community,
I would like to thank Larry Wall
for the absolutely amazing work he is doing. Thanks Larry!
There are many people working very hard to make our dream come true and give us the most innovative and cutting-edge programming language in existance, which Perl 6 is soon going to be.
It would not be possible without all of the
Perl 6
and Parrot
contributors.
Please let us also not forget about
brave people who still actively maintain
Perl 5
and will keep doing it even after Perl 6 is ready.
The
Ponie
project shows us that Perl 5 is not going away.
The work of all of those people
is invaluable. And this is all to give us
free software
development platform of the 21st century,
while uniting Perl, Python, Ruby, Tcl,
Scheme, Ook, Forth, Befunge, BASIC and many other languages
thanks to Parrot, finally allowing them all to seamlessly work together and ending the flame wars between them.
Thank you!
The same goes for the syntax. All the switching between $, @ and % is really irritating (ask a newbie how to get at the length of the keys array of a hash inside a hash, for example), and the changes proposed for 6 are just making this worse [emphasis added]
The changes proposed for Perl 6
means no switching between $, @ and % any more.
I have
submitted
a story but it was rejected, so please let me resubmit it as a first post instead.
The long awaited
Apocalypse 12
by Larry Wall
has been just
announced by
chromatic on
perl6-language mailing list.
It is one of the most important
documents explaining the
Perl 6
language design.
(All of the previous design decisions are available as
Apocalypses by Larry Wall,
Exegeses by Damian Conway and
Synopses by
Luke Palmer,
Damian Conway and Allison Randal.)
Apocalypse 12 talks about Object Oriented aspects of Perl 6,
i.e. about Objects, Classes, Roles (also known as Traits),
Multiple Dispatch and also covers some non-OO decisions:
"The official, unofficial slogan of Perl 6 is "Second System Syndrome Done Right!". After you read this Apocalypse you will at least be certain that we got the "Second System" part down pat. But we've also put in a little bit of work on the "Done Right" part, which we hope you'll recognize. The management of complexity is complex, but only if you think about it. The goal of Perl 6 is to discourage you from thinking about it unnecessarily." --- Larry Wall.
(Lameness filter
didn't allow me to post the table of contents.
Reason: Please use less whitespace.)
If you are new to Perl 6
and
Parrot, then
Perl 6 Essentials
by Allison Randal, Dan Sugalski and Leopold Tötsch
might be a great introduction.
The second edition should be published soon.
You are right,
this is probably the first we should change.
I would suggest
Debian GNU/Linux
for starters and
Debian GNU/Hurd for people willing to experiment and learn more.
Next steps, as I have already mentioned,
could be EROS
and OpenBSD
for systems less popular but extremely reliable and secure.
I wonder which operating systems would other Slashdotters suggest.
I am sure that before I have finished
writing this comment many people will have
already suggested
GNUWin,
TheOpenCD,
Knoppix,
Morphix,
Dyne:bolic,
Debian
and GNU CDs
but instead of jumping on the bandwagon and posting links to them
(even though with no doubt those are great examples of software which every library should definitely have)
I will suggest
including some software which is less popular
but which students might learn much more from
(and in the end, is that not the whole purpose of a library?), id est:
Debian GNU/Hurd,
OpenBSD
and EROS.
Lots of useful software one can buy with a magazine,
but these systems are much harder to find, while much more revolutionary and unquestionably invaluable if we want people to actually learn something important instead of only "clicking" the mouse.
It is also very important to note that these systems
would introduce students to real security,
something which is hard to find and understand,
yet even much harder to overestimate
in the terrorism era and the invasion of our privacy with
things like NSAKEY in Windows and
NSAttributedString in Mac OS X.
That is why I think that actively promoting them
in every library would be the most insightful idea.
Because this SCO farce demonstrated that in fact, this risk really exists. Up to you to decide if you want to buy the insurance or not now...
No. That is not the point.
SCO is the risk.
They are part of the problem,
not the solution.
See: Insuring Cars, Thanks to Thieves.
Do the car thieves
demonstrate that the risk exists
and without them we wouldn't know that we need car insurance? No. Not at all.
Without thieves we would in fact not
need said insurance. That is the point.
Analogously,
without such God damned immoral
bastards like Darl McBride
we would not need
any "Linux insurance."
And that is the most important point.
"There's an interesting article
about the counter-reaction to thieves'
attacks on cars, and how thieves may actually be one of the best things to happen to cars lately, because their attacks have turned a lot of attention to the possible Achilles' heel in the car locking process. Includes some good detail on a company offering insurance against thefts.
This is a great news for every car owner."
"SCO may actually be one of the best things to happen to Linux lately"
"company offering insurance against lawsuits like SCO's, who notably hired Bruce Perens and PJ of Groklaw fame"
Is it really "one of the best things"
for Linux, or for lawyers?
I didn't need to buy any "Linux insurance"
before that SCO farce.
Why should I be grateful?
In my opinion Cowboy Neal might use very weak
analogy here. "In the same way that a larger cache speeds processing time, people with a greater capacity for holding images in their heads are expected to have better reasoning and problem-solving skills." So it means "faster" or "more intelligent"?
A short term memory in the human brain
causes completely different effects than
processor cache,
and it supposedly do it somehow
"in the same way."
It's a question-begging analogy at the very least.
I would personally find a somewhat better analogon in the RAM as aw hole.
Nevertheless, the article in Nature is very interesting, even if not exactly "news" for anyone who is up to date with all recent neurological studies. Great read.
If you are interested in
brain and CPU similarities,
read also about reset nerves. It's not news, but it's very interesting nonetheless, as well as very on topic.
I really don't think the 3d desktop will be feasable until we have some form of useful, cheap, and easy to use 3D input device. Anyone work with this sort of thing?
I do. Actually, it's a 4-D input device. I have two mice.
Read it even more carefully. The actual terms of service says they will pay you $0.25 per CPU Hour, not $1.00. I don't see anywhere in the ToS how they get the $1.00/hr figure. In other words, they flat-out lied, what a surprise.
That's strange.
Spammers have never lied to me about numbers
before...
I am not sure if I understand it correctly.
Does a mini custom install mean
a somewhat standard install more or less or what?
$1 per *CPU* hour
on
Paid To Spam
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Please read it carefully.
It is $1 per CPU hour,
not $1 per hour.
Sending email is not
a CPU-intensive task.
One CPU hour can be equivalent to as much as several weeks of saturated modem traffic!
My God. This article really made me mad.
Nevertheless, I will try to comment it as calmly and culturedly
as possible, even though it might be hard.
First of all,
I use
Debian GNU/Linux
on my desktop and most of my servers.
When I copy a bunch of files, I write commands to do it.
When I configure Apache, I edit text configuration files,
reading and writing text.
Do I do it because I don't have a better
("more intuitive," if you will) interface? No, not at all.
When I prepare some text for a website, I also write HTML
(or XHTML) and CSS
even having lots of WYSIWYG editors at my disposal.
When I write a paper for printing, I use TeX or LaTeX.
Even though I might be using OpenOffice, Abiword, StarOffice,
or anything else, I still prefer writing TeX or sometimes
even PostScript by hand.
That is just the way I choose to do it
because I like it.
I am sick of people who tell me that Donald Knuth
is incompetent in "User Interface Design"
because he uses a keyboard writing text
instead of a mouse chasing flashy pictograms.
I think the term "User Interface Design" is misleading,
because it assumes that every user wants the same interface,
which is not the case.
I, for one, find the CLIto be the most intuitive interface
(OK, maybe the second most intuitive interface,
right after the nipple).
Seriously,
I personally cannot imagine more intuitive interface
than reading and writing text.
Does that mean that in my opinion
textual interfaces are better than GUI?
Yes, of course.
Do I bitch about GUI programs
being "fundamentally flawed"
as far as the "User Interface Design" goes?
Hell, no! And why is that?
Because textual interfaces are better than GUI for me
and I am not so close-minded
and stupid to think that what is best for me
must be absolutely best for every human being in existence.
When I write a program for myself I always try to
make it a Unix-style filter, whenever I can.
It is a command controlled by command-line switches,
operating on data coming from standard input or
files specified on the command line, and printing
the result on standard output and any non-data info
on standard diagnostic output (stderr).
On success it returns a 0 status,
on error it returns an error code.
Just like cat, sort, grep, cut, sed or ed.
Do you think that I have hard time using it because
I was unable to design a user interface?
No! I have designed a user interface which works
best for me.
That way that program can cooperate with other programs
with simple shell glue and pipes,
even with other programs on remote hosts with netcat,
or even encrypted with ssh, all from the command line.
If you want me to design a different interface which works
best for you, then you can
invite me for a good dinner, have sex with me,
or pay me so I have some motivation
to waste my precious time in order to make you happy.
"The lack of focus on user interface design
causes users to prefer proprietary software's
more intuitive interface."
OK, that's true, but... which users?
I am most certainly not one of them.
I might paraphrase:
"The lack of focus on user interface design
causes users to prefer free software's
more intuitive interface,"
which would also be true,
just for different users.
I think that
this article is stupid at best and insulting at worst.
It basically says:
"All users want X. No free software has X.
All proprietary software has X.
That is why all users prefer proprietary software."
while it should be:
"I want X. Free software I used doesn't have X.
Proprietary software I use has X.
That is why I prefer proprietary software."
Anyone who dares to call herself
even a remotely intelligent sophist
will find even the latter reasoning laughable,
but the former hasty generalization
goes even beyond being simply amusing
in its childish naivete. It is plainly insulting.
[...] such as issuing alerts to drivers about impending intersection collisions, rollovers, weather-related road hazards, or warning a driver that his vehicle is going too fast to safely negotiate an upcoming curve
Riiiiiight... they're wanting this system incorporated to protect you. They'd never dream of setting up receivers in traffic lights at (major) intersections to track the movement of people. Watch: it will be a crime to disable these systems, "for your safety" of course.
Speak for yourself.
I, for one, will gladly buy a device
issuing alerts about rollovers.
I usually barely notice when I
roll over, unless I'm sober.
Also, the way I usually
"negotiate an upcoming curve"
is hardly safe.
I think I absolutely need some device to
do it for me.
Slashdot Mirror
As a matter of fact, it does bode well for Perl 6. Even very well, I might add. As Larry Wall has said in his famous State of the Onion speech on TPC4: "Perl 5 was my rewrite of Perl. I want Perl 6 to be the community's rewrite of Perl and of the community." Also, please let me quote the first Apocalypse: "What I will be revealing in these columns will be the design of Perl 6. Or more accurately, the beginnings of that design, since the design process will certainly continue after I've had my initial say in the matter. I'm not omniscient, rumors to the contrary notwithstanding. This job of playing God is a little too big for me. Nevertheless, someone has to do it, so I'll try my best to fake it. And I'll expect all of you to help me out with the process of creating history. We all have to do our bit with free will." Now, I can assure you that those four years were not wasted as you seem to imply. I think Larry Wall has used the right words on OSCON 2003:
How true...
See perldoc perllol: Manipulating Arrays of Arrays in Perl.
Everyone is right here. There is no one language which is best for everyone. Perl 5, Perl 6, Ruby, Python, Lisp, Scheme... They are all going to target Parrot so we will be able to choose our favourite language and still work together instantiating our objects and even inheriting from each other's classes crossing the cross-language boundaries. A very impressive work has already been done in the 0.1.0 "Leaping Kakapo" version of Parrot. See: Parrot FAQ and the languages directory in the CVS.
Excuse me but I believe this story should be on the front page, should it not? I am sure everyone will agree with me. We all have been waiting for that Apocalypse for over a year now (since March 7, 2003, to be precise). Furthermore, this is undoubtedly one of the most important Apocalypses. Am I the only one who thinks that the future of computing as we know it is at least a little bit more important than some satellite TV pirates or the daily SCO Stock update? I believe this story was not posted on the front page due to an errour. I expect it to be corrected by the Slashdot editors as soon as possible. Thank you.
In the name of the entire Slashdot community, I would like to thank Larry Wall for the absolutely amazing work he is doing. Thanks Larry! There are many people working very hard to make our dream come true and give us the most innovative and cutting-edge programming language in existance, which Perl 6 is soon going to be. It would not be possible without all of the Perl 6 and Parrot contributors. Please let us also not forget about brave people who still actively maintain Perl 5 and will keep doing it even after Perl 6 is ready. The Ponie project shows us that Perl 5 is not going away. The work of all of those people is invaluable. And this is all to give us free software development platform of the 21st century, while uniting Perl, Python, Ruby, Tcl, Scheme, Ook, Forth, Befunge, BASIC and many other languages thanks to Parrot, finally allowing them all to seamlessly work together and ending the flame wars between them. Thank you!
The changes proposed for Perl 6 means no switching between $, @ and % any more.
I have submitted a story but it was rejected, so please let me resubmit it as a first post instead.
The long awaited Apocalypse 12 by Larry Wall has been just announced by chromatic on perl6-language mailing list. It is one of the most important documents explaining the Perl 6 language design. (All of the previous design decisions are available as Apocalypses by Larry Wall, Exegeses by Damian Conway and Synopses by Luke Palmer, Damian Conway and Allison Randal.) Apocalypse 12 talks about Object Oriented aspects of Perl 6, i.e. about Objects, Classes, Roles (also known as Traits), Multiple Dispatch and also covers some non-OO decisions:
(Lameness filter didn't allow me to post the table of contents. Reason: Please use less whitespace.)
You can access the entire document as a print friendly version. The standard version of Apocalypse 12 is divided into 20 parts. Enjoy.
If you are new to Perl 6 and Parrot, then Perl 6 Essentials by Allison Randal, Dan Sugalski and Leopold Tötsch might be a great introduction. The second edition should be published soon.
Very good point. There should be someone who can help with installations and suggest appropriate books for beginners.
You are right, this is probably the first we should change. I would suggest Debian GNU/Linux for starters and Debian GNU/Hurd for people willing to experiment and learn more. Next steps, as I have already mentioned, could be EROS and OpenBSD for systems less popular but extremely reliable and secure. I wonder which operating systems would other Slashdotters suggest.
I am sure that before I have finished writing this comment many people will have already suggested GNUWin, TheOpenCD, Knoppix, Morphix, Dyne:bolic, Debian and GNU CDs but instead of jumping on the bandwagon and posting links to them (even though with no doubt those are great examples of software which every library should definitely have) I will suggest including some software which is less popular but which students might learn much more from (and in the end, is that not the whole purpose of a library?), id est: Debian GNU/Hurd, OpenBSD and EROS. Lots of useful software one can buy with a magazine, but these systems are much harder to find, while much more revolutionary and unquestionably invaluable if we want people to actually learn something important instead of only "clicking" the mouse. It is also very important to note that these systems would introduce students to real security, something which is hard to find and understand, yet even much harder to overestimate in the terrorism era and the invasion of our privacy with things like NSAKEY in Windows and NSAttributedString in Mac OS X. That is why I think that actively promoting them in every library would be the most insightful idea.
No. That is not the point. SCO is the risk. They are part of the problem, not the solution. See: Insuring Cars, Thanks to Thieves. Do the car thieves demonstrate that the risk exists and without them we wouldn't know that we need car insurance? No. Not at all. Without thieves we would in fact not need said insurance. That is the point. Analogously, without such God damned immoral bastards like Darl McBride we would not need any "Linux insurance." And that is the most important point.
Insuring Linux, Thanks to SCO
In other news...
Insuring Cars, Thanks to Thieves
"There's an interesting article about the counter-reaction to thieves' attacks on cars, and how thieves may actually be one of the best things to happen to cars lately, because their attacks have turned a lot of attention to the possible Achilles' heel in the car locking process. Includes some good detail on a company offering insurance against thefts. This is a great news for every car owner."
"SCO may actually be one of the best things to happen to Linux lately"
"company offering insurance against lawsuits like SCO's, who notably hired Bruce Perens and PJ of Groklaw fame"
Is it really "one of the best things" for Linux, or for lawyers? I didn't need to buy any "Linux insurance" before that SCO farce. Why should I be grateful?
Does that mean that I was not necessarily hallucinating when I once saw light in the funnel after losing consciousness? Very interesting indeed.
PUBPAT vs. FAT? Oh my GAT! I wonder who will turn out to be fatter--- I mean better.
Seriously though, what is FAT still used for, which wouldn't be better with ext3 on the hdd side and jffs on the side of flash storage?
There's a story up in the free area of The Economist site about 'Linux on Desktop PCs' called: More balls through Windows.
I don't think this is a smart name for such PCs. They should prepare for Lindows-style trademark lawsuits from MSFT lawyers.
In my opinion Cowboy Neal might use very weak analogy here. "In the same way that a larger cache speeds processing time, people with a greater capacity for holding images in their heads are expected to have better reasoning and problem-solving skills." So it means "faster" or "more intelligent"? A short term memory in the human brain causes completely different effects than processor cache, and it supposedly do it somehow "in the same way." It's a question-begging analogy at the very least. I would personally find a somewhat better analogon in the RAM as aw hole. Nevertheless, the article in Nature is very interesting, even if not exactly "news" for anyone who is up to date with all recent neurological studies. Great read. If you are interested in brain and CPU similarities, read also about reset nerves. It's not news, but it's very interesting nonetheless, as well as very on topic.
Dear God! We can no longer trust our TTY services!
OK. I think I should be safe now.
They are much easier for anyone who has a 3-D display and 4-D vision. I believe Jesus might like it.
I do. Actually, it's a 4-D input device. I have two mice.
That's strange. Spammers have never lied to me about numbers before...
I am not sure if I understand it correctly. Does a mini custom install mean a somewhat standard install more or less or what?
Please read it carefully. It is $1 per CPU hour, not $1 per hour. Sending email is not a CPU-intensive task. One CPU hour can be equivalent to as much as several weeks of saturated modem traffic!
My God. This article really made me mad. Nevertheless, I will try to comment it as calmly and culturedly as possible, even though it might be hard.
First of all, I use Debian GNU/Linux on my desktop and most of my servers. When I copy a bunch of files, I write commands to do it. When I configure Apache, I edit text configuration files, reading and writing text. Do I do it because I don't have a better ("more intuitive," if you will) interface? No, not at all. When I prepare some text for a website, I also write HTML (or XHTML) and CSS even having lots of WYSIWYG editors at my disposal. When I write a paper for printing, I use TeX or LaTeX. Even though I might be using OpenOffice, Abiword, StarOffice, or anything else, I still prefer writing TeX or sometimes even PostScript by hand. That is just the way I choose to do it because I like it. I am sick of people who tell me that Donald Knuth is incompetent in "User Interface Design" because he uses a keyboard writing text instead of a mouse chasing flashy pictograms. I think the term "User Interface Design" is misleading, because it assumes that every user wants the same interface, which is not the case.
I, for one, find the CLIto be the most intuitive interface (OK, maybe the second most intuitive interface, right after the nipple). Seriously, I personally cannot imagine more intuitive interface than reading and writing text. Does that mean that in my opinion textual interfaces are better than GUI? Yes, of course. Do I bitch about GUI programs being "fundamentally flawed" as far as the "User Interface Design" goes? Hell, no! And why is that? Because textual interfaces are better than GUI for me and I am not so close-minded and stupid to think that what is best for me must be absolutely best for every human being in existence.
When I write a program for myself I always try to make it a Unix-style filter, whenever I can. It is a command controlled by command-line switches, operating on data coming from standard input or files specified on the command line, and printing the result on standard output and any non-data info on standard diagnostic output (stderr). On success it returns a 0 status, on error it returns an error code. Just like cat, sort, grep, cut, sed or ed.
Do you think that I have hard time using it because I was unable to design a user interface? No! I have designed a user interface which works best for me. That way that program can cooperate with other programs with simple shell glue and pipes, even with other programs on remote hosts with netcat, or even encrypted with ssh, all from the command line. If you want me to design a different interface which works best for you, then you can invite me for a good dinner, have sex with me, or pay me so I have some motivation to waste my precious time in order to make you happy.
"The lack of focus on user interface design causes users to prefer proprietary software's more intuitive interface." OK, that's true, but... which users? I am most certainly not one of them. I might paraphrase: "The lack of focus on user interface design causes users to prefer free software's more intuitive interface," which would also be true, just for different users.
I think that this article is stupid at best and insulting at worst. It basically says: "All users want X. No free software has X. All proprietary software has X. That is why all users prefer proprietary software." while it should be: "I want X. Free software I used doesn't have X. Proprietary software I use has X. That is why I prefer proprietary software." Anyone who dares to call herself even a remotely intelligent sophist will find even the latter reasoning laughable, but the former hasty generalization goes even beyond being simply amusing in its childish naivete. It is plainly insulting.
The bottom l
Speak for yourself. I, for one, will gladly buy a device issuing alerts about rollovers. I usually barely notice when I roll over, unless I'm sober. Also, the way I usually "negotiate an upcoming curve" is hardly safe. I think I absolutely need some device to do it for me.