Re: NO PERL 6

One worry i must say that i have about Perl6 is speed. I know there is alot of talk about how we are not to the point where speed matters yet, and we should be concerned with stability, etc ... but i think we are in danger of reproducing the errors done with Tcl. I am not against Perl6, but there was a point in Tcl development where they decided it would be a good idea to make everything an object, much like alot of the Perl6 ideas ... what this did was make me the winner of the speed arguments against Tcl coders... oh, and make Tcl more useful... but, somehow that gets lost now.

I have been really suprised by some of the changes with Perl6, and how much it resembles Java. I mean, if i wanted to write Java, or any OO-Dependant language, i would. I do write OO-Perl, but i like the option not to. I fear that we are building Yet Another Object Oriented Language.

I understand that many of the changes will make the language easier for new people to learn. But, while it is really nice to woo people away from other languages, and it may make people feel good to develop a language this easy to use, i thought that VB tought us that making coding easier, tends to make code worse. Well, i guess thats the end of my feelings.

I look forward to Perl6, but i really wish they would have just called the language something else, and let it co-exist with Perl as it is ... thus making the rather large existing community happy, while creating this new, easy-to-learn language. I am sure that a reply (and a downvote) will say that "Perl5 will still be around", but, hey, when is the last time your CTO said "lets use the last version of the language, becuase my technical experiance shows it to be better for what we are doing" ? -- They didn't ... they normally choose the newest technology, even when it is not best suited to what you are doing *cough* java *cough*

Just my €0.02

from the frivolous to the serious

Comment on Re: NO PERL 6

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Re: Re: NO PERL 6 by pdcawley (Hermit) on Dec 10, 2002 at 07:56 UTC
The numbers on Parrot vs The Perl VM make interesting reading. Parrot is currently trouncing the Perl VM by at least an order of magnitude (unless my memory is playing me false...). Yes, the P5VM is doing more, but Parrot has a hell of a lot of headroom right now. I will be extremely surprised if Dan and his team don't deliver on the 'as fast or faster than Perl 5' promise.	[reply]
Re: Re: Re: NO PERL 6 by John M. Dlugosz (Monsignor) on Dec 12, 2002 at 22:35 UTC
In terms of arithmetic and other primitive operations, I'm sure Parrot will trounce the P5VM. This will be helpful in coding loops and testing limits and so on, the nuts and bolts of what holds a program together. But individual features may get bogged down. For example, a while back I mused that Perl 6 Patterns would be much slower than Perl 5 Regex's because you can't tell it not to capture everything, and Abigail pointed out that this is not something you can optomize at compile-time without solving the halting problem. So in Perl 5, I try and use built-in stuff even if in clever ways because it's faster than coding an explicit loop; in Perl 6 that will not be the case, but will I avoid grammars like the plauge because they are far slower than procedural code? That's my worry.	[reply]
Re: Re: Re: Re: NO PERL 6 by Elian (Parson) on Dec 12, 2002 at 23:57 UTC
There's no reason that perl 6 patterns will be any slower than perl 5 regexes. The equivalent constructs should take about the same amount of time, modulo the odd optimization on either side. (Likely the perl 5 regex engine will be faster by a bit to start, if for no other reason than a dozen years worth of vicious optimization inflicted on it) I'm not sure where you came up with the thought that you won't be able to limit what gets captured--you'll have at least as much control over capturing as you do now, if not moreso.	[reply]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: NO PERL 6 by John M. Dlugosz (Monsignor) on Dec 13, 2002 at 15:56 UTC
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: NO PERL 6 by Elian (Parson) on Dec 14, 2002 at 18:55 UTC
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Re: Re: NO PERL 6 by revdiablo (Prior) on Dec 10, 2002 at 00:49 UTC
Not only will perl5 still be around and useable, perl6 will continue to be Perl. Object Orientedness is not being forced on anybody, from what I can tell. There may be improvements going on in that area, causing much noise to be made, but the rest of the language is not going to disappear. I feel reasonably confident that perl6 will possess the spirit and nature of the Perl you know and love today. After all, look who's making it -- Larry and the gang didn't suddenly gain a dislike for the language they've spent all these years creating.	[reply]


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