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Postings from June 2006
On Mon, Jun 19, 2006 at 02:08:21PM +0200, demerphq wrote: > On 6/19/06, Abigail <abigail@abigail.nl> wrote: > >On Fri, Jun 16, 2006 at 11:05:55AM +0200, demerphq wrote: > >> Lately I've been seeing comments in various forums along the following > >> lines: > >> > >> 1. Perl 5 is a dead language > >> 2. Perl 5 is going to be replaced by Perl 6 so there is no point in > >> using Perl 5. > >> > >> I think these are a serious problem for the language and the > >> community. When college teachers are saying that teaching PHP makes > >> more sense because Perl is a dead language there is a problem. When > > > >Releasing a new version of Perl5 on average once a year for the first > >six years of Perl5, and releasing only one new version of Perl5 (5.8) > >since the Perl6 effort started 6 years ago didn't exactly help to > >eliminate this notion. Perlhist tells us the following: > > > > 1994 Perl 5.000 released > > 1995 Perl 5.001 > > 1996 Perl 5.002/5.003 > > 1997 Perl 5.004 > > 1998 Perl 5.005 > > 2000 Perl 5.6.0. Perl6 effort starts. > > 2002 Perl 5.8.0. > > > >It's more than four years ago that the last version of Perl5 was released. > > When you dont count minor releases yes thats true. Considering that the "minor releases" are supposed to be "maintainance" releases with new development being deferred to 5.9/10, I think it's fair to leave out minor releases. OTOH, if we take minor releases into account, it situation even becomes worse. For instance, there were 20 minor releases in the two years between 5.005 and 5.6.0, but only 12 releases in the four years since 5.8.0. Between 5.004 and 5.005, there were 30 minor releases (not counting the more than a dozen trial releases), and Chip even had to invent a new counting system for the releases between 5.003 and 5.004. New features is what the world uses as a measurement to decide software is dead, or being developed. And they look at what's being developed - for J. Random Perl Programmer, all the features currently in blead are just vaporware. > >If you want a reason why people think Perl5 is dead, look at perl5. Don't > >point the finger at Perl6. Four year is for ever in this world. > > I think the two are related. But its a good point regardless. They are related in the same sense that both Perl6 and Perl5.10 have no ETA. AbigailThread Previous | Thread Next