"Is Perl 6 production ready?" No."Can I reasonably expect to use Perl 6 in a production environment?" No, except for some fairly trivial and meaningless definitions of "production environment".
I am not aware of anyone in this list or on IRC #perl6 who has made any claim to the contrary. If you look at the documentation on Rakudo Star, it is clearly stated that it is an early stage compiler.
So no one is hiding from or avoiding an unpleasant truth.My response to the original poster was NOT to his first question, but in response to the rather acidic follow up. (His first email was answered by a respectful pointer to the position the perl6 developers have regarding 'the question'.)
In addition, let me say this. It has been over five years since perl6 was first mooted and progress has been slow. But slow progress and justifications for the slow progress are not excuses. Some things do take a long time.
Five years seem an eternity in the frenetic world of dot_coms and the like. But it is not a long time in other areas of human activity.
Wanting perl6 to be finished will not help it happen. Nor will acidic comments.
I am responding to these questions because I think it will help rakudo to evolve faster if the work of the developers is placed in context and their achievements are praised.
I truly love perl6! I really would like for it to be blisteringly fast. I worry it will never be truly fast because it is so complex, but only the future will tell.
So how to get things moving faster?Providing substantial funding would help - I am sure that if most or all the developers of rakudo were all paid good salaries to focus exclusively on rakudo, it would be developed faster than currently. But life isn't like that. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.
Will perl6 miss the boat? Will other teams achieve what perl6 cant? These are entirely different questions to 'Is perl6 production ready?'. The evidence demonstrates that the factors for the take up of a language are not dependent on timing. The popularity of perl5 appears by some measures to be falling and what I think are inferior languages, such as javascript, have become more popular. A response to those questions involves a philosophical debate ranging far beyond 'is perl6 production ready?' This is not a list for such questions.
Richard On 11/23/2011 01:59 PM, Daniel Carrera wrote:
I see things differently. I think that the question "is Perl 6 production ready?" is a meaningful and fairly important question."Can I reasonably expect to use Perl 6 in a production environment?"The question has as much (or more) to do with implementations than the spec, but that doesn't make the question unimportant. I can use C90 and Fortran 95 in a production environment they are supported by stable, robust compilers that produce good quality code. I can use most of C99 and Fortran 2003 in production if I control the compiler.It is entirely legitimate to ask whether Perl 6 is ready for use in a similar sense. Is there at least one implementation that covers enough of Perl 6, with enough quality and speed, that one can reasonably expect it to work well in production?The feeling that I get from the discussions in this forum, and I mean no offence by this, is that people try to divert the question because they do not like the answer. If Perl 6 + implementations had a support comparable to C99 or Fortran 2003, I strongly suspect that most people would have answered with "yes, it is production ready".Daniel. On 11/22/2011 10:09 PM, B. Estrade wrote:Well said. Also, the OP shouldn't confuse Perl 5 (the interpreter-defined language) with Perl 6 (a language definition forinterpreters/compilers). The latter benefits from the fact that "Perl 5"is whatever "perl" says it is - for better or worse. So, asking if "Perl 6 is production ready" is like asking if HPF, C++11, ECMA-262 is "production ready". It just doesn't make sense even if the spirit of the question is mostly understood to mean a "production implementation". Language designing and drafting is a funny thing, and history is wrought with *many* very interesting languages being designed, but failing to gain enough traction to elicite a "production" or (fully implemented) compiler/interpreter. Theexercise itself is still extremely valuable and beneficial to all involved.Brett On Wed, Nov 23, 2011 at 12:38:15AM +0400, Richard Hainsworth wrote:Yet again this thread starts up. Yet again it will end with no one changing their opinions, their expectations, or the time-span of their vision. Personally, I use perl6 in my professional analytical work. I can express solutions to problems elegantly and with a minimum of work. I am not entirely concerned with the speed for most things, but that is the nature of what I do. When I am concerned with speed, I fall back on perl5 and especially perl5 routines that interface to optimised libraries. But I am really frustrated when I go back to perl5 because it feels so clunky compared to perl6. Ruby and Python overtaking Perl? So what? Neither of them have as much coverage as javascript or java, and every time I have to deal with either of those, I recoil in loathing. Truly I just cannot see why theyshould have SO much attention. (No need for a flame war about javascriptor java - it's the way I react to them.) There are things that are worth doing, and doing well. Implementing Perl6 belongs to that category of things that have value in themselves. That is why there are still people still working on Perl6. But if you cant see the beauty in it, or the progress that has been made, you wont ever see it. Shame, but that's life. I have followed Perl6 from the first discussions, the RPCs, the Apocalypses, Exegeses, Synopses, played with pugs, and rakudo. I havehelped it along with some bug reports and occasional questions and patches.Sure it's frustrating to be waiting for something and it not to be there. I waited for Rothfuss's Wise Man's Fear, after reading Name of the Wind. Now I am waiting for the end of the trilogy and it'sfrustrating because Rothfuss hasnt finished it. He is taking the time tomake it what he wants it to be. I want to see how the plots get resolved. Frustrating, but that's life! Lets stop asking about 'production ready' releases. And making snarky remarks when the expected replies come back. It's like asking a republican about a tax increase. No I am not suggesting a flame war on politics, but it's another example of asking the wrong question to someone who already views the world with a different perspective. Nothing good comes from it, no new light on a subject done to death already, no change of heart or view by anybody involved. So why do it? Regards, Richard Hainsworth On 11/22/2011 08:26 PM, Wendell Hatcher wrote:Thanks, so it isnt production ready like a release which would be anofficial release of a new version of perl 5? I have the feeling after well over 5 years this will never happened. I hope Perl 6 doesnt get seen as anovelty or toy and people simply never use it if this hasnt already happened. Ruby is passing Perl by like Python did. -Dell On Nov 22, 2011, at 9:08 AM, Tadeusz So??nierz wrote:On Tuesday, November 22, 2011 16:59:52 Wendell Hatcher wrote:Are there people using Perl 6 in production at this time? Is Perl 6 production ready?http://ttjjss.wordpress.com/2011/08/24/what-is-production-ready/ Kind regards, -- Tadeusz So??nierz
