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Comment by jerf | Hacker News Reader

Has there been any point in time at which Perl 6 was not developing "at a rapid pace"?

Promises that Perl 6 will be available Real Soon got worn out in about 2006. Wake me when something's production ready. The entire Python 3 process has gone from idea, to preliminary implementation process, to release, and almost certainly a 3.1 release while Perl 6 has been "rapidly developing" and out at "Christmas" (yes, I know the nature of the "joke", except I consider it a joke in the pejorative sense; the funny sense wore out in 2006 too).

And if I had to place money on which will be out first, Python 3.2 or Perl 6, it's Python in a heartbeat.

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> Has there been any point in time at which Perl 6 was not developing "at a rapid pace"?

Pre-2005, yes. If you care to look at the commit and spectest graphs on Rakudo.org (for example), you can see the activity levels continue to grow since December 2007.

> The entire Python 3 process has gone from idea, to preliminary implementation process, to release, and almost certainly a 3.1 release while Perl 6 has been "rapidly developing" and out at "Christmas"....

Nonsense. Guido switched jobs in spring 2000 in part to focus on Python 3000. Perl 6 wasn't even announced then.

Rakudo 1.0 will be out in April 2010. Already announced.

Python 3 is not very ambitious. It's not comparable.

But part of the reason Python 3 wasn't "very ambitious" is that the people building it actually accounted for what could be done, and made a distinction between "what would be nice" and "what we actually need". It's been a careful, controlled upgrade process that actually works in the real world. It really is everything that Perl 6 hasn't been.

In my considered opinion, the way that Perl 5 is partially evolving into Perl 6 even before Perl 6 is out is further evidence that a big bang was neither necessary nor desirable. There would be at least one discontinuity point, just like there is for Python 3, but that's manageable.

I'm sure Perl 6 will eventually be released, which is not something I'd say about most projects in this state, but I don't think the perl community is doing itself any favors if it fools itself into thinking this went well. It didn't. Perl 6's process has been a disaster. This point needs to be made.

I'm a professional perl programmer and don't want to see the language die, and it's been frustrating watching Perl 6 try so hard to kill it. As an open source project, they have every right to take as long as they like, I'm not trying to infringe any freedoms, but I have every right to say what I see, and what I see is not flattering at all.

> In my considered opinion, the way that Perl 5 is partially evolving into Perl 6 even before Perl 6 is out is further evidence that a big bang was neither necessary nor desirable.

I disagree strongly.

If you look at what I've called the milestones in the Perl renaissance, you can trace at least half of them (if not more) back to Perl 6.

If you like modern Perl, you owe Perl 6 a huge debt of gratitude.

> watching Perl 6 try so hard to kill [perl5].

I see no basis for this interpretation. Perl 6 has not been detrimental to Perl 5. Perl 5 and its ecosystem has remained perfectly competitive with all relevant alternatives. What was supposed to have happened in Perl 5 in recent years that didn't?

Perl 6 is an ambitious attempt to create a new language and infrastructure for the next ten years (unfortunately on a shoestring budget). The only valid question is whether this was something worth pursuing at all.

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