Am Mittwoch, den 23.11.2011, 17:21 +0100 schrieb Daniel Carrera: > On 11/23/2011 02:58 PM, Richard Hainsworth wrote:
> 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 appreciate this. To me it seems more like 10 years. > > 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. > > > I might appreciate Perl 6 better if I understood this better. I am naive > about language development, so I might be wrong in feeling that 11.5 > years is a long time between the initial announcement and production > implementations. I would guess that other languages like C, Java, > Fortran and Python did not take 12 years from initial planning to full > implementation. I think that it's a common misconception: a time-frame of 10-20 years for developing a "new" programming language is absolutely normal. * Take C for example: http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/chist.html Its conception started in 1969 and after 4 years "the essentials of modern C were complete" but it was not portable ("only" the Unix kernel was written in it). I consider the real takeoff when C was made portable in 1977 and "K&R" published in 1978 allowing a growth in usage in the 1980s. The standardisation only began in 1983 and ANSI 89 was released in 1989: It's 20 years after the initial start. Was C production ready in 1973, 1978 or 1989? The early adopter learned C at the end of the 1970s but most of the developers learned it in the 1980s even if the standardisation was not complete. * And for Java: Development started in 1991 with first release in 1995 but the but it was without just-in-time compilation. The takeoff came with Java 1.1 with just-in-time compilation in 1997-1998 and the real start with the integration of the Hotspot VM (initially developed for the Self programming language) fully complete in 2000 with the release of Java 1.3. The big growth took place in the 2000s. Some says that after 10 years even the specification is not set in stone: so what? It was also the case for C for example. Richard stated that the implementation of Rakudo started 5 years ago even if the design of Perl 6 started more than 10 years ago. Niecza started in 2009/2010, the first release of Niecza was done at the end of 2010 and is making good progress. Both Rakudo and Niecza are helping the specification to be refined. In the past, Pugs have helped a lot to improve the specification and was the real start of the now official test suite. ...but! but! Is Perl 6 a new programming language? ;) Well, it depends on your definition, etc... long thread argumentum ad Hitlerum 8] I don't believe in revolution, everything is evolution: Every new programming language is standing on the shoulder of giants. So have fun with learning something new and be the one who later will be able to say: I was an early adopter when Perl 6 was not broadly adopted. Ciao, Raphael. > Cheers, > Daniel.
