Re: The right time to start a project?

[liz]

...Everybody I have spoken to lately doesn't like the direction of perl 6 at all...

Perl 6 is closer to Perl 5 than many people realize. Much of Perl 5 will simply compile on Perl 6 and run. With Parrot under the hood, it will probably run that code a lot faster as well.

Don't let the Apocalypses and the Exegesi fool you into thinking you will have to use all those nifty new features. You won't. You can if you want. "Simple things easy, complicated things possible" (or something like that ;-).

Liz

[Anonymous Monk]

With Parrot under the hood, it will probably run that code a lot faster as well.

How do you figure that?

What Perl really needs is a better extension system and a native compiler.

[adrianh]

How do you figure that?

Because the current Perl5 VM is a complex evolved mess that is very hard to maintain and optimise. All the bits of Parrot implemented so far have been faster than the Perl5 equivalents.

What Perl really needs is a better extension system and a native compiler.

Curiously enough, two things that Parrot enables :-)

[Abigail-II]

Because the current Perl5 VM is a complex evolved mess that is very hard to maintain and optimise. All the bits of Parrot implemented so far have been faster than the Perl5 equivalents.

But that doesn't mean that if everything is implemented, everything is still faster than the Perl5 equivalents. Perl5 has seen a slowdown over time as well. Which can be largely contributed by the fact the language has become more complex, and perl needs to do more.

Now, it may turn out that in the end Parrot is faster than Perl5 (which is to be expected, if only if it's a complete rewrite), but the comparison of bits of the final Parrot vs the complete Perl5 isn't fair IMO. Let's compare when Perl6 and Parrot are done, and then again 6 years later, when Perl6 and Parrot have to deal with half a dozen years of bolting on new features.

Abigail

[Anonymous Monk]

Looks like Abigail-II beat me to part of the response. As stated, a partial comparison doesn't tell much. This applies to native compiling, the extension system, and speed improvements. Having something in development doesn't mean it'll ever be here in a superior form.

[liz]

...What Perl really needs is a better extension system and a native compiler...

Eh... Parrot has just that or almost. If you follow the Parrot list, you would know that the first native executables have been generated from Parrot. And that work on the extension system is in high gear.

This is what is going to make Ponie so very interesting. It's like halfway between Perl 5 (because it's going to compile Perl 5.10 source code) and it's going to run on Parrot (like Perl 6 and many, many other languages).

Liz