Howdy, Great questions, Bart! Let's see if I can answer some of them...
> * Parrot __should__ have been the de facto VM for dynamic languages. It isn't. We didn't take over the world, yet! Darn. But I am willing to keep trying. > * Dynamic language interpreters have proliferated (pypy, rubinius, etc) We had a good idea before everybody else! But ideas are essentially worthless. You must execute and act on an idea to give it value. We have been acting, but everyone agrees we could be more efficient in our chaotic swirling towards our goal. > * There was a big, important project that absolutely depended on > parrot. It doesn't anymore. You are severely wrong on this point. Please don't spread FUD or blatantly incorrect technical information without consulting your sources. Parrot Virtual Machine is still the most complete (and fastest, iirc) implementation of Rakudo Perl 6. That might change soon with Rakudo on MoarVM and the JVM, but those implementations are still lagging behing Rakudo-on-Parrot. > * The developers of that big, important project have written something > that can only be considered a replacement for parrot, even if it isn't > done yet. MoarVM is the result of many lessons learned in Rakudo, NQP, Parrot and the Perl 6 spec. It is an exciting project that I see as a new cousin to Parrot, not an enemy combatant. Rakudo devs have stated that they want to support multiple VM backends, so MoarVM will be the one they have total control over (good for various reasons) but Rakudo will also target the JVM and Parrot, indefinitely. > Now, you may interpret this it in any way you wish. But at least one > is that parrot has lost a large part of its relevancy. Relevancy, by > lack of (say) money, is what an open source project lives by. Why > would new people join parrot over pypy, moarvm, rubinius, or any of > the other projects? There is a lot of negativity that I don't appreciate here, Bart. People join a community to scratch an itch or help or learn or various other reasons. I am the "Community Ambassador" for Parrot and I hope that people find our community a friendly and knowledgeable one, which does not have dogmatic views about The One True Best Language. For people who want only Python, there is pypy. For those that can only drink Ruby-flavored Koolaid, Rubinius. MoarVM is the new Rakudo-centric VM. You want a VM that aims to support *all* dynamic languages? Welcome to Parrot, my fellow traveler. > Again, parrot is a useful project. But I don't know what the futue holds for > it. The future is what we are building right now. Duke -- Jonathan "Duke" Leto <jonat...@leto.net> Leto Labs LLC http://letolabs.com 209.691.DUKE http://duke.leto.net @dukeleto _______________________________________________ http://lists.parrot.org/mailman/listinfo/parrot-dev
