Why thank you Mr. Chromatic!
In between all my other activities, I have been trolling along this list
from its inception, and followed eagerly every Appocalpse, Exegisis and
Synopsis as soon as they came on line. I download pugs and parrot from
SVN repositories, written tests - one of which still hangs the
compilation of pugs. Indeed the test I wrote for pugs concerned the
ability of pugs to use existing CPAN modules. I have tried parrot with
SDL and the tests fail. My aim was to write a P6 GUI module so that from
the start it would be easy for P6 users to generate UI interfaces easily.
Unfortunately, despite my eagerness, I am not a professional programmer
with the time or the skill to fix the problems. Where I can contribute
is to express a view about how P6 might best be developed. Moreover, I
do think that sketching out the way modules should (at least initially)
be written, and skteching out which modules should be written as soon as
possible, are as much a part of the language design as deciding how best
to use the colon.
Moreover, consider the development of pugs. The first modules to be
developed were Test and Test::Harness. Vital for the development of the
language. Not a part of the core. Equally, Something to replace CGI or
DBI will be essential to the uptake of P6. I would far prefer to have a
skilled and resourceful professional, such as yourself or Damian Conway
write these modules than leave it to enthusiastic amateurs such as myself.
And as for singularities, I appreciate Larry's idea of language
development as being akin to a strange attractor (expressed in answer to
a question I posed on this list nearly a year ago about when P6 would be
complete), but I also fear that the orbits that describe solutions to
some strange attractors have a great deal of volatility and it is never
possible to define at any time exactly what the orbit is - a bit like
not being able to define all aspects of an electron due to Heisenberg's
uncertainty principle. But if that is the case with P6 (and why should
it not given the wholly new areas of programming that P6 is defining?)
where does that leave people like me? Does it mean that we must abandon
P6 to the professionals, just as strange attractors and quantum physics
are the domain of professional scientists? Does it mean that I must, as
it now seems to be the case, move my own programming and the main
language of my firm's IT department to Python?
I realise that @Larry have their own priorities, their own pressures,
their own limited resources. I would like to help, yet there are limits
to what I can do. And I am sure what is true for me is true for many
others trolling on this list.
You are doing a fine and wonderful job. Your efforts - I sincerely
believe - should be applauded and appreciated. My impatience is due to a
heightened expectation and desire to use P6 that in fact is a result of
the fantastic achievements I have already seen.
Richard
chromatic wrote:
On Saturday 08 December 2007 06:50:48 Richard Hainsworth wrote:
Surely, some concentrated thought by the inventive and resouceful minds of
who lead this project should go into language utilisation and
popularisation.
My goodness, @Larry's pretty darn busy trying to build the core kernel of Perl
6 in such a way that the rest of the world can build beautiful and useful
things around that kernel much in the same way that the CPAN as a whole is
the shining gem of Perl 5.
You, Mr. Hainsworth, and every other person reading this message from December
2007 through the singularity (aka Perl 7) officially have my permission to
think about this yourself and pitch in! (Fixing the mixed metaphor in my
first paragraph is a good start. Reading S11 is step two.)
No one ever needed permission, but if it makes anyone feel better, there it
is.
-- c
