James E Keenan wrote:
Do we have answers to the following questions?
1. What code is still unwritten that we will need to have Parrot ready
to go (where "ready to go" is defined as: "ready for a Perl 6 alpha")?
(I'll leave aside the question of when *that* will be ready.)
The canonical list of subsystems that still need significant work are:
* IO
* Events
* Threads
* Compiler tools interface
* Object support
* Exceptions
2. What skills are needed to write that code? In particular, what
skills do we need that are currently in short supply?
I ask these questions because I want to know what specific aspects of
the Parrot project to focus on if I should run into people with skills I
don't have who could be induced to join the project.
Developers with C skills are always handy. People with general
experience in dynamic languages are also good: they pick up PIR quickly.
At the moment, many of the core systems are written in C. Long-term,
there are some good motivations for moving toward a smaller C core.
a) we want Parrot to have a small footprint with dynamically loaded
extensions for running in embedded environments (PDAs, cell phones,
networking hardware, etc)
b) one way to minimize the inferior runloop problem, is to only drop
down to the C level when absolutely necessary for direct interface to C
libraries or speed
c) odd, perhaps, but it seems to be easier to find eager volunteers to
work in PIR than in C (I guess that's a good sign for PIR's usability)
Allison
