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Re^5: The Future of Perl 5

by chromatic (Archbishop)
on Aug 21, 2018 at 23:44 UTC ( [id://1220815]=note: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??


in reply to Re^4: The Future of Perl 5
in thread The Future of Perl 5

By mid September 2000 anyone paying attention should have known that the estimate from the group for an alpha (which Larry had simply relayed on that first day) was going to be years off.

Would you then suggest that subsequent communications from the core team about an 18 month schedule (take, for example, the original project manager upholding his 18 month timeline from mid-September 2000) were made in bad faith?

That's not helping your argument.

I suppose you could point to this end of September update that the schedule would move by *two weeks*, but that's also not helping your argument.

Seems weird to hew so closely to "what Larry actually intended in the announcement" and then immediately walk it back with "but everyone knew that was a lie by September" while jumping way over what Larry actually said in September.

I am continually amused and disappointed by P6 advocates trying to revise history when that history is so easily searched.

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Re^6: The Future of Perl 5
by liz (Monsignor) on Aug 22, 2018 at 08:52 UTC
    I am continually amused and disappointed by P6 advocates trying to revise history when that history is so easily searched.

    Indeed.

    And I am continually saddened by your insistence on pouring salt into the Perl 6 inflicted wound that you seem to have. I think it's time to let the scar heal.

      And I am continually saddened by your insistence on pouring salt into the Perl 6 inflicted wound that you seem to have.

      And I am continually disappointed that P6 advocacy just can't help making things personal.

      P6 burned through multiple project managers, burned out multiple technical leads, threw away multiple dead ends, but the real problem is pepole who point this out.

      I guess it's a Please Clap strategy.

        You guys keep quarreling about the past while we need a strategy for the future.

        Cheers Rolf
        (addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)
        Wikisyntax for the Monastery FootballPerl is like chess, only without the dice

        And I am continually disappointed that P6 advocacy just can't help making things personal.

        Last time I checked, we're all people of flesh and blood. People who make announcements. Whether they be in bad faith or not. If you think this is all not personal in some form or another, you have a pretty inhuman view of the Perl community.

        In this particular case, I thought I was giving good advice to somebody who clearly is in agony. Nothing more, nothing less. Think of that what you will. People who know me a little better than just from online interactions, know that's a thing that I do.

Re^6: The Future of Perl 5
by raiph (Deacon) on Aug 27, 2018 at 22:35 UTC
    Would you then suggest that subsequent communications from the core team about an 18 month schedule (take, for example, the original project manager upholding his 18 month timeline from mid-September 2000) were made in bad faith?

    Why would anyone suggest that? I see optimism, some folk being better informed than others, chaos, confusion, delights, surprises, unrealistic expectations, disappointments -- the usual ups and downs of real life.

    Nat introduced an explicitly unreliable 18 month timeline on August 18th, 2000:

    There are still some unspecified dates ... I'll unilaterally decide those ... The final release will be on (he picks a date approx. 18 months from the start of the project) 1 January 2002. ... Remember, the further into the future one peers, the less reliable the crystal ball is.

    On September 3rd he wrote:

    I hadn't envisaged the sheer number of RFCs

    I do not think he was "upholding his 18 month timeline" when he wrote the first post you linked:

    I want this RFC hell to end, and I want us to stick to some of the major milestones (and Larry's release of the language specs is one of those).

    A week later, on Sept 20, he posted the second message you linked:

    I talked with Larry about schedule. I'd been under the impression he was going to produce a draft language spec on October 1, and the final on October 14. He set me straight: draft on October 14 (his keynote to the Atlanta Linux Showcase), no deadline yet for final spec. ... Larry said he wanted to have a comment on every RFC by October 14. That's a lot of work :-)

    I suspect Nat had gotten confused by this time. How could Larry produce a draft spec from the RFCs the same day the RFC process ended? This seems to conflict with skud's schedule and common sense.

    Nat thought Larry producing a comment per RFC by Oct 14 was "a lot of work". But he also thought Larry had said he'd have a draft spec done by the same day. Again, I suspect Nat had gotten confused. (For the record here's a summary of what Larry did for ALS.)

    At this point, the timeline past September 30th was not only "unreliable", as Nat had already written it was, with the longer term milestones the most unreliable of all, as Nat had also already written, but was essentially unknowable until Larry wrote the spec.

    And the rest, as you say, is searchable history.

      Why would anyone suggest that?

      Because I think you're untrustworthy.

      Nat introduced an explicitly unreliable 18 month timeline on August 18th, 2000

      That's all very convenient to your argument, retconning the P6 project manager as giving deliberately unreliable schedule advice (and justifying it that it's obviously unreliable here, 18 years later), just to save you from having to admit that Larry's original estimation was incredibly unrealistic.

      I suspect Nat had gotten confused by this time.

      Of course you do. You'll throw anyone who left the project under the bus if it prevents you from having to consider that anyone still involved with the project has ever made a mistake.

      Would you care to explain "we expect to have alpha code a year from now" and the P6 team's repeated failure to give estimates longer than "18 months away" or "alpha code by next summer's YAPC" for several years?

        Because I think you're untrustworthy.

        I've promised myself that I would refrain from replying to anything you say. Because you accuse people with love of Perl, and Perl 6 in particular, to always get personal, ad hominem. Since you clearly are getting personal here, I feel freed from my promise to reply to your comments.

        Stuff happened in the past. Things didn't go as planned. It took way longer than anybody anticipated. Some people kept going on when others gave up on the idea.

        But, now we have not one, but at least 2, possibly 4 viable versions of Perl around. Diversity is good. TIMTOWTDI.

        Can we please, please, look towards the future instead of mulling about the past?

        Thank you in advance.

        Because I think you're untrustworthy.

        .oO ( What does it mean when even rhetorical questions get hostile answers? )

        I've seen many beautiful exchanges here at PM reminding me of the importance of putting judgment aside if one is to hear what someone else is saying. Hopefully I've been able to understand your perspective in this exchange. Hopefully you understand why I'm wondering, not for the first time, if your interpretation of what I write is dramatically colored by your judgment of me.

        That's all very convenient to your argument, retconning the P6 project manager as giving deliberately unreliable schedule advice

        Nat gave good advice. I feel you are twisting his words and now twisting mine.

        Larry's original estimation was incredibly unrealistic.

        It turned out to be incredibly unrealistic. The project ended up not only seriously missing the original timeline but the entire effort, from start to 6.0, managed to take longer than even the decade gestation period that seems common among other arguably similar language efforts.

        You'll throw anyone who left the project under the bus if it prevents you from having to consider that anyone still involved with the project has ever made a mistake.

        Perhaps you so distrust me, and feel so much contempt for me, that you don't care to be reasonable, but I'm going to stay the course for this, my last comment in this thread.

        I don't see how me defending Nat leads you to think I'm throwing him or anyone else under the bus. I hope that everyone still involved in the project has been and still is making mistakes because that would mean they're human and they're learning.

        Would you care to explain "we expect to have alpha code a year from now" and the P6 team's repeated failure to give estimates longer than "18 months away" or "alpha code by next summer's YAPC" for several years?

        I've said my piece about Larry's words up-thread.

        I participated in mailing list discussions in the early years (I think 2001-2004 or thereabouts), read Piers' reports, that sort of thing. I didn't pay much attention to YAPCs. I mostly missed Audrey's 2005-2007 involvement. I don't recall seeing the estimates you speak of. I do recall the amusing quip of "By Christmas". I'm happy to leave enthusiasm unexplained anyway and will leave analysis of it to you.

        Since around 2000 I had the overall impression P6 would get done if Larry had enough patience and energy left and contributors cared to keep contributing. Now it's here I don't see the point in taking a negative view of the past. Learn from mistakes, sure, but apportion moral blame? Why?

        (Btw, those were rhetorical questions.)

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