On Thu, Feb 21, 2008 at 01:07:14PM +0100, Juerd Waalboer wrote: : I would very strongly prefer to see a focussed effort towards a single : full implementation. : : There are many important benefits to having several implementations, : including fun and education. But commercially and marketing-wise, it's : better to first assemble something that *works*, then to optimize its : performance.
Hmm, indeed, you just named one of the things that pugs did better than parrot. : In terms of priority, the compatible alternative : implementation should come third, not first. It would be unwise to fund : multiple implementation projects, and raising those funds would be : unnecessarily hard. Well, given that we can't even raise funds for the first project very well, it's a bit premature to be playing zero-sum games. : Many people feel that Perl 6 is going nowhere. Best thing the community : can do, is to show them that Perl 6 is getting somewhere. Again, that was a really good argument for pugs, which among other things *renewed* excitement in parrot. But pugs also demonstrated some difficulties with that approach. The fact is that every approach has run into almost insurmountable difficulties from time to time, and it's only brute determination that keeps most of us going most of the time, regardless of which project we're working on. : Every destination is most quickly reached by travelling in a straight line. I suppose such a platitude is natural for a "plat"-lander, as long as you don't mind swimming a few canals from time to time. Certainly it seems to have been a good argument for the armies that regularly march through your neighborhood... :) But around where I live, just because you can see the top of a mountain doesn't mean you can get there easily. Most often, a straight-line march will leave you with a deadly amount of either air or water under you. You're lucky if you only end up with a sheer rock face in front of you. The West was explored primarily by mountain men who lived off the land trapping furs, not by the railroad companies. You're arguing for the railroad company to do the exploration, but I think we also desperately need to find somebody who is interested in buying furs from those people who do not like to go in straight lines. As they say, the map is not the territory. And the terrain is just a small part of the geography. Geography is a subtle destiny, when it's not being obvious. Not every design decision is as obvious as the Panama Canal, and even that took two tries. And it's still not a straight line...where's Paul Bunyan when you need him? Larry
