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Re: The current state of Perl6

by BrowserUk (Patriarch)
on Apr 20, 2010 at 05:01 UTC ( [id://835651]=note: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??


in reply to The current state of Perl6

The questions I'd like to see an answer to--were we allowed to ask them--are:

  • Can any current implementation of Perl6 do everything that Perl5 can do without extensions and modules?
  • If not, what is missing? And why? (That is: what is the limitation preventing it.)
  • How's the current performance?

Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.

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Re^2: The current state of Perl6
by moritz (Cardinal) on Apr 20, 2010 at 09:53 UTC

    Thank you for asking a sane, answerable and non-FUD question in this thread :-)

    I can only talk about Rakudo, but I'm quite sure it's the most usable compiler these days.

    Can any current implementation of Perl6 do everything that Perl5 can do without extensions and modules? If not, what is missing?

    No. Rakudo mostly lacks IO to be a proper superset, as well as concurrency.

    And why? (That is: what is the limitation preventing it.)

    For IO: priorities, spec uncertainties, and a champion.

    Rakudo development so far has focused mainly on language features, and a few contributors that are too scared to hack the guts (like me) have filled in many built-in functions. But with IO it's not that easy, because you have to interact with parrot in scary ways (or so it seem to me). The specification for IO stuff is currently in the weird state of being both over engineered in some areas, and under engineered in others. So it would take somebody with quite some experience to implement the sane parts, adapt the spec where it's insane, and expand it where necessary.

    Concurrency support mostly blocks on parrot, which doesn't expose threads to HLLs in a usable way (has a few blocking bugs, and has had them for quite some time). Still there is hope: We've received a quite good google summer of code proposal to fix up threading. Nothing is decided yet, but I have hopes that it will be funded.

    How's the current performance?

    Bad. You should expect Rakudo programs to run 100 up to 1000 times slower than comparable perl 5 progreams.

    Perl 6 - links to (nearly) everything that is Perl 6.
      > > How's the current performance?

      > Bad. You should expect Rakudo programs to run 100 up to 1000 times slower than comparable perl 5 progreams.

      Did you mean "prog-dreams"? ;-)

      My 2¢ to this discussion:

      The most interesting parts of the Perl6 project were:

    • a JIT compiler tuning the execution nearer to C-speed
    • an orthogonal redesign allowing much easier language extensions in the future, while Perl5 is stuck in a byzantine labyrinth of patches and patches of patches.

      Unfortunately for most of the messages I read from the Perl6 team, I have to admit:

      I'm really sorry, but I don't understand... 8-(

      Cheers Rolf

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Re^2: The current state of Perl6
by Anonymous Monk on Apr 20, 2010 at 06:13 UTC
    I think lack of contributors is the limitation they have currently.
      he specifically asked what features Perl5 has that Perl6 doesn't yet. he didn't ask for the cause it doesn't have them. many contributors with small time-slices are probably not going to make a lot of progress IMHO
        Questions about the current percentage of spec coverage can be answered only by the developers who are working on it. Or probably testers.

        But why was the pugs project abandoned? Why did Rakudo developers start from the scratch when something like pugs was already available to build upon?
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