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Re: Perl 7 or Perl 2013?
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From:
Peter Rabbitson
Date:
February 6, 2013 19:34
Subject:
Re: Perl 7 or Perl 2013?
Message ID:
20130206193427.GA17731@rabbit.us
On Wed, Feb 06, 2013 at 01:45:27PM -0500, Ricardo Signes wrote:
>
> This topic has come up many times in the past few years. It is generally in
> the form "let's call the next one Perl 7" or "let's hide the 5 and call it
> version 18" and sometimes "Perl $Year."
>
> These all say, "Perl is the language, and Perl 6 is something irrelevant."
> This is specifically in contradiction to Larry, who has *specifically* and
> *repeatedly* addressed this point in keynotes and other public presentations.
>
> We can't call it "Perl {$x>5}" without contradicting Larry and if some folks
> are interested in organizing a committee to badger Larry *even more* about this
> issue, the most I can really do is say that this isn't the place to do organize
> such a committee. I'd also like to say that this has been addressed so many
> times that further pressing of the issue seems inappropriate.
But this sidesteps a *very* thorny but nevertheless real problem - Larry
has no interest in Perl5. He is interested in the evolution of Perl.
Currently this is the soon to be ready (for real, no christmas puns)
Perl6. But I am pretty sure he has no plans whatsoever for future
maintenance releases of Perl5 or anything like that. Does this mean that
this list will automatically disappear once Perl6 ships? Or will it
disappear 2-3 years after that after the bugs get finally ironed out of
Perl6? I don't think so.
This list is where most of the Perl5 stakeholders hold conversations
about Perl5. Not Perl6, not Moe. If this list isn't the appropriate one -
which is?
>
> Furthermore, were Perl 7 to be released (secretly known to be Perl 5.20.0),
> what would the outcome be? It would gain attention, and people would say,
> "Wow, a big new release of Perl? What's new? Oh. Not very much! Ho hum."
> It gets us attention and then squanders it, because it isn't able to deliver on
> "all the amazing cool new stuff." What's amazing and cool since 5.8? Many
> excellent features ranging from "small but very handy" to "significant and
> useful in some circumstances." I am delighted to have s///r and lexical subs
> and (soon) subroutine signatures, but if the notion is that people think
> nothing has happened in 10 years, and the answer they get is those, I think we
> will appear desperate rather than vibrant.
This is a valid point from a technical perspective. But perception wise
it seems to be false. I can not explain it. I myself am disgusted by the
notion of Firefox 231.11. Yet it seems to work for them. *Really* well
at that. So maybe the folks who do man our stands on non-perl events
know a thing or two about things we don't know about...?
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