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Re^6: A wholly inadequate reply to an Anonymous Monk

by pmichaud (Scribe)
on Apr 23, 2010 at 23:25 UTC ( [id://836626]=note: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??


in reply to Re^5: A wholly inadequate reply to an Anonymous Monk
in thread A wholly inadequate reply to an Anonymous Monk

I was talking about an improved evolution of Perl 5 ...
My apologies, I misunderstood what you were saying. So to answer what I now understand you to be talking about...
Releasing a Perl5 compatible successor, maybe just bundling Moose for OOP and Coro for multithreading and maybe some syntax cosmetics and restriction³ to contradict the "write only language" complaint would easily cannibalize the Ruby spectra like they are actually cannibalizing the Python spectra.¹
...
Perl5 is somehow in the situation of Neanderthals who are told by the gods that further evolution is useless because Sapiens Sapiens will arrive in Europe and wipe them out.

Sorry, I really can't speak to plans for Perl 5 development, that's not my field of expertise. And I don't know what gods you know that are telling Perl 5 not to evolve, but I can guarantee they will be denounced by the Perl 6 team, not worshipped by us. After all, Perl 6 hopes and plans to interoperate with Perl 5 someday, and anything that can be done to help the two languages converge (i.e., both languages must evolve) will be of great assistance in that effort.

I also think that the many Perl 5 contributors who have slaved away these past years to bring 5.8 and 5.10 into the world can be justifiably miffed that their heroic efforts are so easily dismissed by comments like this.

Honestly, Perl6 should be renamed into something like Perl++.

Hypothetically, let's suppose for a moment that I agree with you, and that we should change Perl 6's name to something else. Will this suddenly free up the name for Perl 5 to use in marketing materials? I think not -- I think any attempt for a Perl 5 successor to make use of the Perl 6 name in the next five years would befuddle the marketplace even further and cause even more ridicule of Perl in general. There's just too much baggage (much of it negative) already attached to the name "Perl 6" for Perl 5 to be able to make any good use of it now. (I'd apologize, but the choice was never mine to make nor significantly influence. I understand why people are pained by it though.)

I think we can speculate all we want about how "Perl 6" ended up being the wrong name for what we got, but I fear that train left the station years ago, before people ever recognized it as a potential problem. Let's move on. Personally, I think we're better off exploring names like "Rakudo Perl", "Vanilla Perl", "Strawberry Perl", "ActiveState Perl", "Pugs", etc. than boxing ourselves into a strict sequential 4, 5, 6, ... numbering scheme.

(If you think such an approach cannot possibly work from a marketing perspective, then I offer Windows 3.1, Windows NT, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7 as an obvious counterexample. And of course there are also things like "Windows CE" and "Windows Mobile" that denote products in the same family but have an entirely different technical basis and purpose. Whether you respect Microsoft's technical skills or not, I think we all have to admit that they probably know a thing or two about marketing and that they show it's possible to be successful in spite of marketing mistakes.)

TMTOWTDI is our motto, and one of the deep lessons I've learned from watching Larry and the Perl community work is this: Just when it seems like there are competing needs that seem impossibly irreconcilable, someone comes up with an absolutely brilliant, unprecedented solution that makes the world say "Wow" and forevermore changes the way that everyone thinks about it in the future. I'd like to see us work towards that end, rather than eternally regret "what might have been" with the name "Perl 6".

Pm

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Re^7: A wholly inadequate reply to an Anonymous Monk
by LanX (Saint) on Apr 24, 2010 at 00:00 UTC
    > I also think that the many Perl 5 contributors who have slaved away these past years to bring 5.8 and 5.10 into the world can be justifiably miffed that their heroic efforts are so easily dismissed by comments like this.

    well I thought it was quite clear that I was talking about the marketing effect of an official new major release.

    Of course Perl5 is evolving but - sadly - it's not noticed!

    And I don't care how the sum of all these heroic efforts should be called as long as it is a good name.

    So what do you suggest? Perl5++, Perl5NT, Perl 5000?

    IMHO alone the existence of "Perl6" project psychologically hinders efforts towards a new major release of Perl5.

    Cheers Rolf

    PS: I have to say don't like these rhetorical tricks ...

      well I thought it was quite clear that I was talking about the marketing effect of an official new major release.

      No, it wasn't entirely clear to me, but in this case I'm suspicious of my own biases coloring my readings of what you wrote, and it's been a long week for me. Apologies again if warranted.

      Still, I claim that other than being able to call a successor-to-5-release "Perl 6", the existence of Perl 6 doesn't block improvements to Perl's marketing efforts or the ability to create "an official new major release" of Perl 5. In this respect, I think names like "Perl Renaissance" and "Modern Perl" can have a lot more impact in announcing "major release" than a simple number increment could ever do. But I also believe that Perl 5 leaders are far more qualified and capable to make those determinations than I, and I'd like to avoid any appearance of a Perl 6 leader telling the Perl 5 folks what they should be doing.

      I fully agree with masak++ that the Perl 5 story could be best improved by changing the name of Perl 6. But I also agree with masak that this is not at all likely to happen anytime soon, and I conceive that although a Perl 6 name change might be best for Perl 5 today, it might not be best for Perl in the long run.

      So, I want to accept our current reality for what it is, and recognize that if we're really going to honor TMTOWTDI, and if there's going to be a Perl family of languages, then let's figure out how to name and market all of our children as something more than just "4", "5", and "6". Because I think that any community that can produce brilliantly creative names like "CPANTS", "Moose" (and "MooseX"), "Lingua::Romana::Perligata", "Ponie", "Rakudo", and "phasers" can surely come up with more creative and marketable names for its flagship products than simple sequences of small numbers.

      Pm

      [Update: I overlooked "Strawberry Perl" in the list of brilliantly creative names associated with Perl.]

        I'm a marketing type, and this situation does bug me. Flight of fancy: Perl 5 skips to Perl 7. Perl 6 gets renamed to Perl Whatever. People will weave a new set of ridiculous misunderstandings about why these name changes have occured, but my sense is that these names would work in both the short and long term for both Perl 5 and Perl 6 in both press and public contexts.
        > and I conceive that although a Perl 6 name change might be best for Perl 5 today, it might not be best for Perl in the long run.

        I politely dare to disagree. A name change will help both, and as I said especially the "Perl++" team will benefit.

        And the longer members of your team propagate that it's "the next version" of Perl, you'll see tensions and/or ignorance growing.

        > can surely come up with more creative and marketable names for its flagship products than simple sequences of small numbers.

        Patrick, honestly I hate all these fantasy names without clear definition or at least intuitive or memorizable association ("phaser" as an exception has an understandable etymology). Try a poll here who actually knows the difference between Rakudo and Parrot. Thats part of this communication disaster.

        I want to remind you that the official version number of Windows 2000 was NT 5 ! And I still don't understand how Delphi got such a stupid name - and always have to remind me that its Pascal.

        If you would (like me) follow Python boards and see the frustration Ruby causes you might change your opinion about a fast major release of Perl5.

        Look the guys in these other boards are in average at least 10 years younger than the usual Perl crowd. We are gambling the future away to become the new Cobol.

        Anyway I started to answer you to offer you a way out of your frustrations¹ not out of combativeness!

        Good luck! 8)

        Cheers Rolf

        ¹) ... and not of mine. Thankfully I have an exit strategy for the worst case to migrate to a language which is named with a clear association to a gem like Perl ...

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