On 05/23/2012 03:35 AM, Parrot Raiser wrote:
Perl 6 is awesome.
agreed
<snip>
In short, Perl 6 is awesome: "Extremely impressive or daunting, inspiring awe".
http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/awesome?view=uk
That is a problem, if we want to get it adopted widely and quickly.
Not convinced 'getting it adopted' should be a goal in itself.
A major goal is to ensure perl6 implementations can be utilized in every
relevant environment. We have unix and windows, but I'm not sure we have
android or iOS. And other important environments include browsers
(scripts embedded in html).
The popularity of a language amongst programmers seems to be a function
of fashion and ease of doing something that is fashionable. So perl
became THE language for the internet at one time because it linked in so
easily to the scripting url syntax. php became popular due to the ease
of mixing html code with scripting language, and so on.
Personally, I would like to be able to write perl6 scripts (even if only
a subset of perl6 was available) that can be embedded in html files.
Since perl6 is just so much more elegant than javascript, it would
attract a lot of programmers.
Fashion is not everything of course. perl was well designed, so even
though the internet fashion for perl declined, to be replaced by other
languages, programmers continue to use it for other reasons. For the
same reason, once perl6 "infects" the programmer population, it will be
used more widely because it is well designed.
At some point, I think, there will be a "fashionable" problem area which
will be most easily solved using perl6 - eg., the grammar aspect is just
so different from anything else I have seen that I am sure it will find
a use.
In short, the gap between the status of perl6 as an interesting
phenomenon for computer language scientists and the status of perl6 as a
widespread standard for programming will be bridged - I suggest - by the
appearance of a "killer problem domain", a type of problem that is faced
by many programmers and which is more easily handled in perl6 than in
any other language.
It would also help for perl6 activists to demonstrate just how well
perl6 works in that domain, and that will require tutorials, articles,
etc. So educational texts are important, but secondary to the problem
domain.
<snip>
The problem we have is to provide a path for learning 6, that presents a
comprehensible but useful subset of the language to the average user
as soon as possible, while leading the programmer with more complex needs,
(and greater abilities), to the features they need or will appreciate.
Crucial to this post is the set of assumptions around 'average user',
assumptions that appear to me to be US-centric. The population of
programmers resident outside the USA will soon exceed (if it has not
already exceeded) the number within the USA. perl6 has been designed to
be agnostic to human readable languages and scripts, and that might have
an effect too if it is easier in perl6 to deal with non-English texts.
