On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 1:11 PM, Gabor Szabo <szab...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 6:21 PM, Lyle <webmas...@cosmicperl.com> wrote: > > > > I wasn't *shitting* as you put it, on other peoples work. At least no > more > > so than Bill's original comment about Perl 6. I expressed my opinion only > > and should be free to do so. > > I already asked Bill in my response to refrain from such comments. > I don't think that having "freedom of speech" means we should not > care about the feelings of our fellow Perl mongers and we should not > respect their work. > I wasn't shitting on Perl 6. I just don't think it stands a snowball's chance in hell of being adopted in place of Perl 5, unless some serious marketing energy is thrown behind it (like getting rid of the "Perl" name which is more of a liability these days). People will hear "Perl 6" and assume it's just a new version of an obsolete language, when really it's almost a whole new language. But I'm not shitting on Perl 6 itself. I think it's got some beautiful ideas in it. But it's been in design/development for so long that it seems like it will always be vaporware, and in the meantime Perl 5 has been neglected. What's called Perl 6 should be a whole new language with a new name, and the things about Perl 5 that are so out of date should have been fixed in that codeline. As for Moose, I have similar concerns. I think it changes the nature of the language too much to be considered Perl, but not enough to be considered a new language. Maybe if Moose was more like a repackaging of Perl with the Moose stuff more tightly integrated, and presented as a new language that's based on and backward-compatible with Perl 5, then maybe it would make more sense. But as it is, it's just Perl with some weird changes to the OO practices that are incompatible with the majority of Perl5 code out there. The technology is fine. But we (collectively, the Perl community) suck at marketing. The perception I hear everywhere I go is that Perl is a dead-end language, and will soon go the way of Fortran or COBOL. It's too late to change that. But maybe if Perl 6 were released under a totally new name it could gain traction the way Ruby has done.
