Perl 6 to Break Compatibility, Support Other Interpreters
Linked by David Adams on Sun 7th Dec 2008 02:03 UTC, submitted by HugoS
General Development Version 6 of the popular Perl programming language will not be compatible with previous versions, but will open up a new world of custom "languages" and interpreters, according to its founder Larry Wall. Wall and his co-developers are doing with Perl 6 -- starting again. "It will break backward compatibility [but] in order to simplify it we have to get rid of old cruft, particularly the regular expression cruft," Wall said. "A lot of the unreadability of Perl is related to the regular expression syntax â€" and we didn't do that, we got it from Unix. It needs to be end-of-lifed."
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tene
Member since:
2008-07-24

This is yet another example of an overly-ambitious software project, lacking in clear direction or anything resembling an attainable roadmap - in other words, a deathmarch to nowhere-land.


An attainable roadmap? You mean the one here: https://trac.parrot.org/parrot/wiki/ParrotRoadmap ?

We've been meeting our release goals pretty regularly for the past two years. I'd say that's a pretty good indication of clear direction and attainable goals.

Reply Parent Score: 2

sbergman27 Member since:
2005-07-24

We've been meeting our release goals pretty regularly for the past two years. I'd say that's a pretty good indication of clear direction and attainable goals.

And the planned release date is? The "release goals" you've been meeting are like the circle cast by a lantern in the dark. No guarantee of getting out of the forest. You need a map and some landmarks.

Edited 2008-12-08 19:10 UTC

Reply Parent Score: 1

tene Member since:
2008-07-24

And the planned release date is? The "release goals" you've been meeting are like the circle cast by a lantern in the dark. No guarantee of getting out of the forest. You need a map and some landmarks.


Did you even look at the roadmap I linked? The planned release date for 1.0 (Stable API for language implementations) is March 17. Six months after that is 1.5, our "Mostly Feature Complete" release. Six months after that is 2.0, "Production Ready"

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progster Member since:
2005-07-27

"We've been meeting our release goals pretty regularly for the past two years"

But they/you have been at it for 8 years, I was still a minor when people started talking about perl 6... that sure seems like a long time ago now ;) . So excuse us for being a bit cynical :-)

Reply Parent Score: 1

egarland Member since:
2005-08-05

"But they/you have been at it for 8 years, I was still a minor when people started talking about perl 6..."

How long is a complete language redesign and rewrite supposed to take? Python just did some syntax updates and minor tweaks for 3.0 and it took them 8 years. Parrot is a completely new VM with capabilities no VM has had before. Perl 6 is a ground up redesign of the language. They designed for 6 years before starting coding and now have been coding for 2 years with regular progress and working builds that you can download and use *right now*. They have a plan, a schedule on that plan and they've been making their milestones on that schedule. This is the antithesis of vaporware.

There are legitimate criticisms of Perl 6, none of yours are among them.

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pantheraleo Member since:
2007-03-07

Any software project that has taken over 8 years and doesn't even have a beta release yet, is in serious trouble. Obviously, if this were not an open source project, the plug would have been pulled by now and the project written off as a total failure that cost millions of dollars and never went anywhere.

There are clearly some major project management problems going on here.

Reply Parent Score: 0