First off apologies if there is some posting/site which details this well - I started at www.parrotcode.org and spent a while fruitlessly wondering why noone had posted at the mailing list archive nicely html'ified http://archive.develooper.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ for a while
before finding the far more useful active state site (which would be nice to link from parrotcode.org for occassional watchers like myself).
D'oh! Time to get the website rev'd. I'll go dig up our volunteer for that and get it fixed.
As for times:
Now - an ideal world would be:
Perl-5 or Perl-5 like syntax for lightweight scripting
Indeterminate future.
Java or Java-like syntax for objects
The low-level object design will be done by Jan 30th.
An consistent, few-cornor case, executation engine that can handle circular references and threads
Circular refs are not a problem.
Threads will have a finished design by this friday. I expect an implementation within three or four weeks. (I make no bets on when we've a fully bug-free thread implementation. If we did we might well be the first one ever... :)
Embeddable in Apache like mod_perl
Already doable, in a crude way. Doing this properly should take about two weeks of time for someone familiar with Apache's embedding interface. (With that time coincident with me having free time if it exposes some parrot issues that need resolving)
perl6 as a language looks cute, but... is not so necessary.
Just *not* going there. :) After Forth and DecisionPlus, I'm half-ready to implement INTERCAL then never touch a computing instrument more complex than an abacus...
So... my question is - Can anyone give me dates for the above features in the parrot/perl[5|6] path? Is it "sometime in 2004" for an alpha release or "sometime in 2005" for an alpha release or "we're really not sure, check back in 6 months?"
For an Alpha, we need threads and objects, which have a time up there. We also need design and framework for proper async IO, events, runtime code loading, and notifications. (Partial implementations are in already for some of that)
Having said that, I think we may put some off for Alpha 1. Its distinctly possible we'll have an a1 release for OSCON 2004, since we (well, *I*) will need alpha functionality to make sure the pie goes in the right direction.
And, out of interest, what is the rate limiting step for this (amount of coffee given to Dan?)
In large part, yes. Communication bandwidth and latency is also an issue -- there are things that we could clear up in a week if we got a half-dozen of the interested parties in a room with lots of white board space, coffee, and someone to take good notes that take a month or more to trickle out on the list.
I realise this is a somewhat frustrating question to answer, but any answers (even partial) would help
The frustrating questions are usually frustrating because they're important and we don't like the answers. Those are the ones that really ought to be dealt with first, like it or not. :)
--
Dan
--------------------------------------"it's like this"-------------------
Dan Sugalski even samurai
[EMAIL PROTECTED] have teddy bears and even
teddy bears get drunk
