Re: Standards bearers (was Re: xml and perl 6)
duh. I'll learn to finish reading all the posts before adding my own *someday*. --- Darren Duncan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: At 10:23 AM +0300 12/11/07, Richard Hainsworth wrote: Darren Duncan wrote: At 9:04 AM +0300 12/10/07, Richard Hainsworth wrote: 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. I for one can assert that both of these are being produced right now. Also that neither is part of the Perl 6 kernal, though the kernal may enhanced over time to better support them. -- Darren Duncan A great relief. Fantastic. Where should I be looking to see what is happening. Is there some form of coordination of this module writing activity? Look in the ext/ subdirectory of Pugs version control to start with, as it contains a bunch of Perl 6 modules in various stages of completion, some doing http or web stuff, and some doing database stuff. One place to look for some coordination is on the perl6-users list. They were discussing a CGI replacement awhile ago, and Juerd made a proposal plus some example code, which became HTTP/ and Web/ under ext/. On various DBI lists there was some talk about DBI-2, which it ended up will have a foundation written for Parrot with bindings for Perl and other languages. There is also a mod_parrot project. There is also my Muldis DB project, a version of which is written in Perl 6, and which is being built rigorously. These efforts are all separate from each other, as per CPAN module development in general, and there is no one coordination point of all of it. But the work is still getting done nonetheless. As for standards, well those tend to be defacto. Whichever of these projects get functional and used will likely set the pace for what comes next, which may include forming the basis for more formal standards. -- Darren Duncan Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/newsearch/category.php?category=shopping
Re: Standards bearers (was Re: xml and perl 6)
It also helps that you consistently make incisive observations and contributions to conversations, even if they are a little tart sometimes. :) But on this general note, is there any current organization or location where small problems are being parcelled out? I'd love to help, but my time is as limited as everyone's If I could get small bites of work to do, maybe I could contribute something useful. Anyone requesting one black-box module or function at a time? Or am I pipe dreaming? --- chromatic [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sunday 09 December 2007 22:04:30 Richard Hainsworth wrote: 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. If you send me or the Parrot list the Parrot test results, I will do my best to fix them. 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. Hey, I'm a trained musician and sometimes novelist who develops software on the side, and the primary reasons @Larry absorbed me are that: 1) I transcribe conversations faster than anyone else on the team 2) I had a working keycard to O'Reilly's Tarsier meeting room in Sebastopol and the reason I keep working on this stuff is: 3) I'm some combination of too stubborn or too stupid not to keep working on it All it takes to make a contribution is a fraction of my stupid or my stubborn plus some spare time. -- c Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/newsearch/category.php?category=shopping
Re: Standards bearers (was Re: xml and perl 6)
Paul Hodges wrote: But on this general note, is there any current organization or location where small problems are being parcelled out? I'd love to help, but my time is as limited as everyone's If I could get small bites of work to do, maybe I could contribute something useful. Anyone requesting one black-box module or function at a time? Or am I pipe dreaming? I've also been looking for something to do. Some organization ( or direction on where to go ) on this would be excellent. -- _ispy++ [EMAIL PROTECTED] :: use Perl;
Re: Standards bearers (was Re: xml and perl 6)
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
Re: Standards bearers (was Re: xml and perl 6)
At 9:04 AM +0300 12/10/07, Richard Hainsworth wrote: 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. I for one can assert that both of these are being produced right now. Also that neither is part of the Perl 6 kernal, though the kernal may enhanced over time to better support them. -- Darren Duncan
Re: Standards bearers (was Re: xml and perl 6)
On Sunday 09 December 2007 22:04:30 Richard Hainsworth wrote: 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. If you send me or the Parrot list the Parrot test results, I will do my best to fix them. 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. Hey, I'm a trained musician and sometimes novelist who develops software on the side, and the primary reasons @Larry absorbed me are that: 1) I transcribe conversations faster than anyone else on the team 2) I had a working keycard to O'Reilly's Tarsier meeting room in Sebastopol and the reason I keep working on this stuff is: 3) I'm some combination of too stubborn or too stupid not to keep working on it All it takes to make a contribution is a fraction of my stupid or my stubborn plus some spare time. -- c
Re: Standards bearers (was Re: xml and perl 6)
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
Re: Standards bearers (was Re: xml and perl 6)
On Sun, Dec 02, 2007 at 07:43:25PM -0800, Peter Scott wrote: : I do feel strongly that we need some sort of solution to this so that Perl : 6 is not merely an outstanding framework that leaves all domain-specific : extensions to the end user. Perl 6 as a language doesn't address this (except to keep the library namespaces precise and accurate), but that doesn't mean it won't get addressed or that we don't want it addressed. We're aiming for an ecology more like Linux, where we distribute the kernel, and others build distributions around it, and those distributions are designed to make it easier for various classes of end users. In any case, I'm certain the community will also make sure that something CPANishly downloadable is there, since no distribution can possibly guess right all the time. But a single editorial board is not scalable over the long haul. We'll eventually need multiple such boards that compete among various perceived and real ecological niches. We can start with one distribution as long as it is explicitly realized that anyone can fork it at any time, for any reason. Then let Darwin take over, and see what the service economy does with it. Now, it might well be that a Perl standards body could specify a mininum suggested set of modules for any distribution to enhance interoperability, but we haven't got to that point yet, I don't think. Someone with an organizational bent could get a running start to come up with such a editorial center, but setting standards out ahead of practice is rarely the optimal approach. And right now, we would, at best, be guessing from Perl 5 best practice. Maybe that's good enough to start with, if we can get any two people to agree on what the Perl 5 best practices are. :) Anyway, that's the reasoning behind supplying as little as possible with the P6 kernel. We don't want anyone mistaking it for a distribution in the first place, nor do we want us language lawyers to evolve into any kind of official distribution board. Central planning doesn't scale over the long term. We should restrict our federal activities to those that help all the states get along with each other, at least well enough to avoid a civil war. Of course, as the U.S. proved at the beginning, when you fear a strong federal government it's possible to invent too weak a federal government. There's a balance in there somewhere that we're still trying to figure out... Larry
Re: Standards bearers (was Re: xml and perl 6)
Larry Wall wrote: Now, it might well be that a Perl standards body could specify a mininum suggested set of modules for any distribution to enhance interoperability, but we haven't got to that point yet, I don't think. This would be great though!! Even if it is afterward, it is still a lot better than nothing! perl6 offers a lot of new nice features in the grammar itself, but the lack of standards over than those of programming 'best practices' could be a problem. When I started to learn perl5, I have read (and am still reading because I am far to be a good programmer^^;!), a lot of books, online tutorials but none of them were doing it the same way! And I am still trying to get it! (What I liked though it is that I have learnt of lot more than other languages!) I guess perl6 is a solution to this problem thanks to the grammar itself. This is great, I think. But the above concerns regarding standards modules are a real issue too it should not be underestimated. Anyway, that's the reasoning behind supplying as little as possible with the P6 kernel. We don't want anyone mistaking it for a distribution in the first place, nor do we want us language lawyers to evolve into any kind of official distribution board. Central planning doesn't scale over the long term. We should restrict our federal activities to those that help all the states get along with each other, at least well enough to avoid a civil war. Of course, as the U.S. proved at the beginning, when you fear a strong federal government it's possible to invent too weak a federal government. There's a balance in there somewhere that we're still trying to figure out... Larry -- シリル・デュモン（Cyrille Dumont） [EMAIL PROTECTED] our work is the portrait of ourselves tel: 03-5690-0230 fax: 03-5690-7366 http://www.comquest.co.jp
Re: Standards bearers (was Re: xml and perl 6)
On Fri, 30 Nov 2007 03:57:58 -0700, David Green wrote: Part of a solution is search.cpan.org -- if you can figure out which of the 870 XML modules will be useful to you. Another part is asking on newsgroups or lists -- if you can figure out which of the 870 opinions offered is knowledgeable. I think things like the CPAN ratings and reviews will become increasingly important. Of course, this is all a community issue (rather than a technical issue), and questions about handling reputation are certainly not limited to Perl or CPAN. Maybe some kind of Advisory Board would help, where people (who might be experts in various ways) can offer informed recommendations on what modules make a good fit for what circumstances. Ultimately, if this is something we want, somebody needs to volunteer to organise something. (Or volunteer to figure out exactly what it is that would need organising) I do feel strongly that we need some sort of solution to this so that Perl 6 is not merely an outstanding framework that leaves all domain-specific extensions to the end user. Please note that I am not arguing for inclusion in the core; presumably I *am* arguing for some sort of standard flavors of P6 that are named and supported. If we can't solve that any better than Luke's assessment I fear we will have sold Perl 6 short to a large community. Part of the major attraction of Perl 4/5 was knowing how much was core/standard; you could write programs that did everything from DNS calls to shared memory access to database access and know that anyone anywhere with Perl could run them. But nowadays you need a slew of modules to write good programs. It would be a shame if we perpetuated in P6 the syndrome of having to be in the echo chamber [1] before you knew what those modules were. We ought to be able to spread that knowledge around a bit better. I'd just hate to see the same situation of For good O-O, use Class::Accessor, No, use Class::Struct, That's ancient, use Class::Std, No, the new standard is Object::InsideOut, That's so 2006. All the best programmers are using Moose now. Okay, so we will have standard O-O in P6 so that scenario doesn't apply, but substitute CGI/DBI/XML/etc/etc and you have a picture that will. Does everyone who wants to know what to use to do those things properly in P6 have to be subscribed to TPR/perlmonks/clpm/perlbuzz/use.perl.org/arrgh? Can we find a way to make and maintain some recommendations in a way that people can find them easily from P6 itself? If I'm shopping for a car and I find a place that sells a fantastic drivetrain and says that they leave the choice of body, wheels, and seats to me I'm going to look somewhere else because I don't have the time to research auto component integration even though if I did I could end up with a car to die for. Maybe what we need is an editorial team. Developers tend more to want to include everything, like a Slashdot page where you have to wade through acres of dross to find something useful, because sitting in judgment on someone else's submission is distasteful. But editors are used to making judgments and dealing with the consequences. If we could find people who would do that job perhaps they could define a few standard bundles that end users and distro maintainers could choose if they don't want the core alone. Yes, it involves value judgments and we don't like to make those and people will argue about their decisions no matter what, but does that have to stop us? [1] http://groups.google.com/group/perl.perl5.porters/msg/74ecce32ff1ad845?dmode=source -- Peter Scott http://www.perlmedic.com/ http://www.perldebugged.com/
Re: Standards bearers (was Re: xml and perl 6)
Peter Scott writes: I do feel strongly that we need some sort of solution to this so that Perl 6 is not merely an outstanding framework that leaves all domain-specific extensions to the end user. OK. Can we find a way to make and maintain some recommendations in a way that people can find them easily from P6 itself ... Maybe what we need is an editorial team. Build it, and they will come! This isn't something which needs to influence language design -- in the sense that it doesn't need to be sorted before the design can be final and Perl 6 released. It isn't really anything that needs to be agreed by central diktat (remember that search.cpan.org isn't in any way official -- it's 'just' a Cpan mirror which happens to have a web interface that many people find convenient). Nor is it something that needs to be got right the first time, or we need to be confident will last as long as Perl 6. (For example, ActivePerl has been the _de facto_ standard Windows Perl distribution for some time; it's possible that Strawberry Perl in time will take over that, but if so it'll just be because it gets momentum behind it and the community as a whole chooses it, not because somebody named it as such.) Smylers
Re: Standards bearers (was Re: xml and perl 6)
On Nov 30, 2007 10:57 AM, David Green [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Maybe some kind of Advisory Board would help, where people (who might be experts in various ways) can offer informed recommendations on what modules make a good fit for what circumstances. Ultimately, if this is something we want, somebody needs to volunteer to organise something. (Or volunteer to figure out exactly what it is that would need organising) Step 1: Form a committee to decide whether the formation of a Organization Committee for the Advisory Board would be advantageous. Step 2: Allow time for the committee to decide. Step 3: If the organization committee is formed, allow it time to organize the board. Step 4: By this time, Perl 7 will have been released, and the board is closed with a Job Well Done. Alternative Step 4: Determining whether this step will ever be reached is equivalent to the halting problem. Luke
