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Re^14: Curious about Perl's strengths in 2018

by chromatic (Archbishop)
on Apr 24, 2018 at 16:46 UTC ( [id://1213486]=note: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??


in reply to Re^13: Curious about Perl's strengths in 2018
in thread Curious about Perl's strengths in 2018

These examples sound like XS code exploiting undocumented or internal features, without being widely used.

For a long time, there was no strong line between "documented" and "internal only features" in XS. Furthermore, there's still a persistent belief that CPAN modules should support dozens of releases of multiple stable major versions of Perl going back multiple years.

XS-as-extension language being the same as XS-as-implementation-language is a big blocker to major internal rewrites. If a solution to that had begun in 2000/2001 (instead of wasting a decade and a half producing Advanced Perl Substitute), we might be seeing the benefits of it now.

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Re^15: Curious about Perl's strengths in 2018
by Your Mother (Archbishop) on Apr 24, 2018 at 16:58 UTC

    I doubt that those who were energized and mobilized by the greenfield of Perl6 would have had the intestinal fortitude to attack the problems cited in this thread; which were largely socially bounded anyway.

      Given how many experienced porters P6 burned out and chased off (Dan, Simon, Chip, Nick, Artur, Hugo, a few more that don't immediately come to mind), I still suspect that things could have been different if all that energy weren't wasted going down a dead end.

        It's unclear to me how P6 was a harsher environment for core contributors than P5 could have, would have been attempting to do similar things against the grain of a fairly ossified culture and spec by tradition; not to be pejorative; I have only praise and gratitude for all porters on all projects; they make my development life possible. It seemed like there was just as much community resistance and apathy for P5 forks as there was for P6.

        From outside the Perlsphere Perl5 is largely considered a dead end and sub signatures and such wouldn't have altered that perception because it's a brand and application/library problem more than a language problem. If we're talking about wasted energy, there is a legitimate case to be made that it's what all Perl devs are expending since there are several good alternatives outstripping Perl in marketshare, new features, and problem domains. Again, that's devil's advocate. I love Perl and only code because Perl exists whether or not it's a cul-de-sac in which my career may be forever parked.

Re^15: Curious about Perl's strengths in 2018
by LanX (Saint) on Apr 25, 2018 at 12:21 UTC
    Well lack of management, vision and strategy replaced with pseudo religious hubris.

    Ironically does the Mythical Man Month already predict how a "second system" becomes overloaded and impossible to implement.

    Well the first good argument for Perl 6 I heard was that maintenance will become much easier. It was a certain chromatic who convinced me...;)

    Anyway in absence of a time machine we should concentrate on what is left and get rid of the weird 10% legacy which hinder the evolution of the remaining 90% of Perl 5.

    Cheers Rolf
    (addicted to the Perl Programming Language and ☆☆☆☆ :)
    Wikisyntax for the Monastery

      Ironically does the Mythical Man Month already predict how a "second system" becomes overloaded and impossible to implement

      From the beginning, the Perl 6 folks were well aware of Brooks' famous aphorism, even using it in their slogan (Apocalypse 12):

      The official unofficial slogan of Perl 6 is "Second System Syndrome Done Right!"

      From InfoWorld Larry Wall Interview (2015):

      So early on, our slogan, or at least one of them, was "Second System Syndrome Done Right." And how do you do that? Well, you just have to take long enough. Companies can't do that because they have a bottom line and a burn rate. But we're an open source community, not needing to make a profit, only to do good in the world. So you know the saying, "Good, fast, cheap: pick two." Well, by definition our community has to do it cheap, so the saying reduces to "Good, Fast: pick one." And we quite intentionally picked good rather than fast.

      See also: Three Tales of Second System Syndrome (Perl 6, Python 3, PHP 6 circa 2015)

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