> Perl 5 is far from stagnant--please don't bend the truth to fit your
> points. My impression is that there's quite a bit more constructive
> activity on p5p than there was a year ago.
I've stopped paying attention to P5P except for keeping an eye on the
possibility of a new surprise upgrade from Microsoft. However, the attitude
of the P5P is irrlevant to the user base.
> : Unless Perl 6 is capable of parsing and running that 99.9% (or
> higher) of
> : Perl 5 scripts originally foretold, I foresee a far worse
> outcome for Perl 6
> : than has happened for an almost universally rejected 5.6 and 5.6.1.
>
> There you go again, as Uncle Ronnie used to say. Excessive hyperbole
> will cost you sympathetic readership.
Shall I list them again? Dude, it's been 13 months since 5.6 was released,
and two commercial entities have so far accepted it: ActiveState and SuSE.
Speaking with SuSE around October (7.0), the rep's answer getting back to me
was simply "we don't consider it to be stable enough yet to include it in
our distribution".
If Perl 5.6 hasn't caught on after a year, God help us trying to pass Perl 6
off as still Perl sometime this decade.
> Nobody ever foretold 99.9%, as far as I recall. I surely didn't.
I was quoting you from about 5 messages ago...
<larryquote>
If 99.99% of scripts translate, that's good enough for me. :-)
Actually, if 95% of Perl 5 scripts translate, I'll be overjoyed.
</larryquote>
That's where it came from.
The issue on the table is the magnitude of the diversion from Perl 5 to
"Perl 6", and my issue is its effect on the user base, especially commercial
users and their legacy. I have to be concerned for these people: they're my
customers and my peers. Perl 4 -> Perl 5 happened at a time when perl wasn't
considered THE scripting language. Entire commercial systems weren't widely
written in it. Python, PHP, ASP, VBS, Ruby, and .NET weren't hot on it's
tail spreading FUD to mezmerize users with transparent and ephemeral
fancies. The effect on Win32 alone could be disastrous, so consider what
would happen on systems where parts of the system itself were Perl 5 (some
Linux distros lean heavily on Perl).
p
