Comment by cesarb | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cesarb | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> Although Perl 6 was meant to be a Python 3000 type thing, it was spun out into its own language (Raku).

The problem for them is that Perl 6 actually had an official release (and IIRC, more than one) under the Perl 6 name; the rename of the language to Raku (which IIRC was originally the name of just one VM for running Perl 6 programs) came later. So anyone who managed to keep up with the latest release of the Perl language would have two huge breaking changes (Perl 5 to Perl 6 and Perl 6 to Perl 7), the second one undoing most of the changes of the first. (AFAIK, PHP avoided all that by deciding to go back before officially releasing PHP 6, so anyone who was following the latest release just jumped directly from PHP 5 to PHP 7, avoiding the breaking changes which had been planned for PHP 6.)

I get how you (and perhaps others) might think it's as you say. But I can tell you're not saying what you've said based on knowing it to be true but guessing it to be so. And while your guess isn't a surprising one given natural assumptions due to the names "Perl", "Perl 5", "Perl 6", and "Perl 7", it doesn't correspond to what has actually happened.

Anyone keeping up with the latest release of the Perl language has had near zero breakage for decades. (Indeed Perl has a well deserved reputation for having an outstanding track record in this regard compared to almost all other mainstream PLs.) I personally see every likelihood Perl 7 will extend that track record, though of course my crystal ball prognostications are necessarily based purely on what I see.

No one using P6 or Raku had a huge breaking change from Perl 5. No one using P6/Raku will have another one going to Perl 7.

If you presume Raku and Perl are different languages you'll get the essence of what has actually happened so far, and seems likely to be more or less true for the rest of this decade at least.

Incorrect, Raku(do) is not the VM. It's MoarVM (or JVM but that one is trailing behind). Rakudo is the reference implementation.

Also you should think in terms of Perl 5 -> 7. Raku is the language formally known as Perl 6. Perl 7 isn't undoing anything, it will be the successor to Perl 5. Perl 7 should have been 5.32 with saner defaults, but of course it's now going to take another 20 years of bikeshedding until this is happening.

https://www.perl.com/article/announcing-perl-7/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com