Re: perl6's new name?

[David Green]

It’s far from obvious that playing with the name is likely to make things 
significantly better. Perl 6 has been P6 longer than Perl 5 had been P5 — or 
Perl Anything — at the time it was conceived. That’s not to say nothing should 
be done about it, but as some people have pointed out in the Github thread, 
there are important issues to be dealt with first. In the meantime, that would 
give an opportunity for anyone who is serious about the marketing side of 
things to do some actual research instead of guessing what we think might 
possibly help sort of.


> On 2019-Aug-12, at 11:57 am, Richard Hainsworth  
> wrote:
> There are is one statement in Eliza's original text that is not correct, and 
> several that are debatable.
Here’s the original text quoted from LizMat's Github issue: 
https://github.com/perl6/problem-solving/issues/81 


Perl 6 certainly started out as the next version of Perl 5 (hence the “6” in 
the name), and had Larry been able to see into the future, no doubt the 
marketing would have been different. And we should care about marketing, 
because Perl(s) exist in a market of programming languages, and if the product 
isn’t profitable (in a programming-language sense) then eventually there will 
by nobody left to develop and maintain it and write modules for it. Which would 
be a real shame.
But of course you’re right that there needs to be a good reason for whatever 
course of action is chosen, and I don’t see what that reason is.


-David

Re: Could this be any more obscure?

[David Green]

On 2018-09-30 9:31 pm, ToddAndMargo wrote:
>By the way, schools have books.  Why is it do you suppose that that 
schools also have teacher?


Well, why is it, do you suppose, that hiring a tutor costs so much more 
than buying a book?


Certainly, some people learn better aurally than visually.  There are 
quite a few recorded P6 presentations around, but I don't know if 
there's a collected list anywhere, or one that links to recent talks 
(anything not too out-of-date).



>[RH] are mixing socialist political terms with what I am stating.  [...]
>I have been very clear what I am after, so I won't repeat it yet again.

The word "common" comes from Latin, and "typical" from Greek, but in 
this context they are synonyms. There's nothing political about it.  But 
it does show how easy it is for something that is clear to one person to 
be misunderstood by another. Repeating something the same way doesn't 
make it clearer (that's one of the reasons we have teachers instead of 
only books, because they can reword things and take different approaches).


There isn't any easy answer to coming up with documentation that works 
for everyone.  (You can't please all of the people all of the time.) 
Perl(5)doc is just a book, after all; but "be more like Perl 5" won't 
work, because Perl 6 is *different* from Perl 5.  Putting beginner and 
advanced docs together might end up with a mish-mash that makes nobody 
happy.  It seems likely to me that you're looking for example-based 
documentation that is organised very differently from docs.perl6.  What 
about Moritz's *Perl 6 Fundamentals*, "A Primer with Examples, Projects, 
and Case Studies"?


https://www.apress.com/gp/book/9781484228982

Is this something that better fits the way you think?


-David

Re: bitwise paper?

[David Green]

On 2018-10-02 9:57 pm, ToddAndMargo wrote:
Does anyone know of a paper out in web land showing how to do bitwise 
operations?
$ p6 'my $v = 32 & 16; say $v;' 

If you search docs.perl6.org for "bitwise" you will find "+&":

https://docs.perl6.org/language/operators#infix_+;

And sure enough, 'say 32 +& 16' will return '0'.

The other bitwise operators work likewise: almost the same as Perl 5, 
but with a "+" in front (to indicate that they are numeric operators, as 
opposed to plain "&", "|", etc., which are now junctions... and yes, 
there is https://docs.perl6.org/type/Junction for those who dare!).



-David


P.S. Actually, the search returns:
https://docs.perl6.org/language/operators#index-entry-Numeric_bitwise_AND_operator
...instead of the correct fragment: "#infix_+&"

Re: Could this be any more obscure?

[David Green]

On 2018-10-02 6:28 pm, ToddAndMargo wrote:
Question: in Perl syntaxland, is "postfix" short for "postcircumfix"? 

Again, search for "postcircumfix" in docs.perl6.org, and you will get this:

https://docs.perl6.org/language/operators#index-entry-postcircumfix_operator

>>term++  postfix
>>(term)  circumfix
>>term1[term2]    postcircumfix

So it's a postfix operator and circumfix operator put together: *after* 
one term, and *around* the other term.




-David

Re: Feedback requested on playlist of 200 Perl 6 videos

[David Green]

On 2018-10-03 5:03 pm, Ralph Mellor wrote:

I've been building a collection of P6 videos for about 5 years.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRuESFRW2Fa77XObvk7-BYVFwobZHdXdK_polymer=true
Terrific -- I was going to say this should be listed on 
https://perl6.org/resources/ but it is indeed there! (Dunno why I didn't 
see it before, my brain was probably expecting "presentations" or 
"videos" and scanned right past the *Screencasts* section.)



-David

Re: Could this be any more obscure?

[David Green]

On 2018-09-30 9:31 pm, ToddAndMargo wrote:
>By the way, schools have books.  Why is it do you suppose that that 
schools also have teacher?


Well, why is it, do you suppose, that hiring a tutor costs so much more 
than buying a book?


Certainly, some people learn better aurally than visually.  There are 
quite a few recorded P6 presentations around, but I don't know if 
there's a collected list anywhere, or one that links to recent talks 
(anything not too out-of-date).



>[RH] are mixing socialist political terms with what I am stating.  [...]
>I have been very clear what I am after, so I won't repeat it yet again.

The word "common" comes from Latin, and "typical" from Greek, but in 
this context they are synonyms. There's nothing political about it.  But 
it does show how easy it is for something that is clear to one person to 
be misunderstood by another. Repeating something the same way doesn't 
make it clearer (that's one of the reasons we have teachers instead of 
only books, because they can reword things and take different approaches).


There isn't any easy answer to coming up with documentation that works 
for everyone.  (You can't please all of the people all of the time.) 
Perl(5)doc is just a book, after all; but "be more like Perl 5" won't 
work, because Perl 6 is *different* from Perl 5.  Putting beginner and 
advanced docs together might end up with a mish-mash that makes nobody 
happy.  It seems likely to me that you're looking for example-based 
documentation that is organised very differently from docs.perl6.  What 
about Moritz's *Perl 6 Fundamentals*, "A Primer with Examples, Projects, 
and Case Studies"?


https://www.apress.com/gp/book/9781484228982

Is this something that better fits the way you think?


-David

Re: bitwise paper?

[David Green]

On 2018-10-02 9:57 pm, ToddAndMargo wrote:
Does anyone know of a paper out in web land showing how to do bitwise 
operations?

Trying to AND 0010  with 0001 
$ p6 'my $v = 32 & 16; say $v;' 

If you search docs.perl6.org for "bitwise" you will find "+&":

https://docs.perl6.org/language/operators#infix_+;

And sure enough, 'say 32 +& 16' will return '0'.

The other bitwise operators work likewise: almost the same as Perl 5, 
but with a "+" in front (to indicate that they are numeric operators, as 
opposed to plain "&", "|", etc., which are now junctions... and yes, 
there is https://docs.perl6.org/type/Junction for those who dare!).



-David


P.S. Actually, the search returns:
https://docs.perl6.org/language/operators#index-entry-Numeric_bitwise_AND_operator
...instead of the correct fragment: "#infix_+&" -- is that generated 
automatically?

Re: Could this be any more obscure?

[David Green]

On 2018-09-30 9:31 pm, ToddAndMargo wrote:
>By the way, schools have books.  Why is it do you suppose that that 
schools also have teacher?


Well, why is it, do you suppose, that hiring a tutor costs so much more 
than buying a book?


Certainly, some people learn better aurally than visually.  There are 
quite a few recorded P6 presentations around, but I don't know if 
there's a collected list anywhere, or one that links to recent talks 
(anything not too out-of-date).



>[RH] are mixing socialist political terms with what I am stating.  [...]
>I have been very clear what I am after, so I won't repeat it yet again.

The word "common" comes from Latin, and "typical" from Greek, but in 
this context they are synonyms. There's nothing political about it.  But 
it does show how easy it is for something that is clear to one person to 
be misunderstood by another. Repeating something the same way doesn't 
make it clearer (that's one of the reasons we have teachers instead of 
only books, because they can reword things and take different approaches).


There isn't any easy answer to coming up with documentation that works 
for everyone.  (You can't please all of the people all of the time.) 
Perl(5)doc is just a book, after all; but "be more like Perl 5" won't 
work, because Perl 6 is *different* from Perl 5.  Putting beginner and 
advanced docs together might end up with a mish-mash that makes nobody 
happy.  It seems likely to me that you're looking for example-based 
documentation that is organised very differently from docs.perl6.  What 
about Moritz's *Perl 6 Fundamentals*, "A Primer with Examples, Projects, 
and Case Studies"?


https://www.apress.com/gp/book/9781484228982

Is this something that better fits the way you think?


-David

Re: Production Ready Perl 6?

[David Green]

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.

Indeed.  To quote Alan Perlis, Some cathedrals took a century to complete. Can 
you imagine the grandeur and scope of a program that would take as long?  Perl 
6 is nowhere near taking a century, but it is grand.  And in fact Perl 6 is 
really three major projects, any one of which would reasonably take five years: 
the specification, the Parrot VM, and the Rakudo implementation.  But of 
course, most people are not aware of how productive the last decade has been in 
terms of the spec and Parrot, they just know it hasn't produced 
/usr/bin/perl6. 

So I don't think progress has been that slow for three ambitious and mostly 
volunteer-run projects. Rakudo still has a few years to go before we can begin 
to worry about whether it will ever be production-ready.  Some people might 
have given up on P6, but that makes up for the people who would have given up 
on a half-baked version if it had been released years ago.  If it takes 15 
years, Perl 6 is still going to be amazing, and that's why people will use it.  
For now, folks will continue to complain about the chronology; but when it 
arrives, they will care only about the amazingness.


-David

Re: Guido’s library porting considerations

[David Green]

On 2008-Mar-18, at 1:42 am, Aristotle Pagaltzis wrote:
[...] how is he going to tell whether the breakage is due to your  
API changes or due to his own code not being Py3k-ready?



Sounds quite well reasoned to me. Is this something that makes
sense to encourage for 5-to-6 migrations of Perl code as well?


In theory, I don't think it matters as much for P6: if you want to use  
the old API, just keep using the P5 modules with your P6 code.  My  
understanding is that Python 3's backwards-incompatibility means  
you'll need to use all Py3 stuff together.



-David