Fosdem 2015: It's Christmas!
Get Ready to Party!
Larry Wall
If you are reading this and you didn't hear that Larry bit the bullet, rolled the dice, flipped the coin, shattered the space time continuum...breathe... then you really are going to get a shock.
Larry has announced that the Perl 6 Developers will attempt to make a development release of Version 1.0 of Perl 6.0 in time for his 61st Birthday this year and a Version 1.0 release by Christmas 2015.
So why do I say attempt?
Well it isn't as easy as promising, because we have a real issue if we do such a damn fool thing. There are a number of reasons, aside from the hidden complexities of code, that could scupper the plans. The inevitable bus-in-the-face failure being just one of them. A cautious 'Murphy doth exist' attitude is the right one to take.
What Larry has done is realise that they are most of the way towards achieving a goal they always thought they would fail, as he would say 'he fails good'. For that reason the developers have made the move towards a release this year, this is their best and I get the feeling that's way past what others would consider 'good enough' for a 1.0 release.
The Talk
If you get chance I would recommend looking up the talk online when the videos are made live from FOSDEM. The structure of Larry's talk was an analogy between Perl5--Perl6 and Tolkien's Hobbit--LoTR. This at first felt like it could have been a stretch however as always it was a well-crafted piece that had been deeply thought through.
There was a lot that Larry pulled out to make analogous between the languages and the books and in the structure of the works as well. Added to that Larry is a speaker who can drop from the lofty fifty miles up view into a live demonstration of a few inches in a heartbeat. Larry takes you on a journey but at no point does he let you forget he is not just the storyteller but the scribe colouring the glyphs.
What Does this all Mean?
There is going to be the inevitable discussions, comments and probably some mileage from detractors to come. However ever were it so, for us in the Perl Community these are quite exciting times. We have two strong languages and a strong community, I think there is a lot that binds us together so here's looking forward to Christmas.
Just Another Perl Adminion
From the bottom of my heart, thank you. I have been keenly looking forward to this for a long, long time.
I think there's a good chance that Perl6 will not only become 'relevant in the large', once again, but also, once again, be a driving force in the overall improvement of our industry.
This was my first FOSDEM, and attended the Perl stream which was all Saturday. Liked it alot, some of the talks I thought would be boring, but where in fact very interesting. From 9.00am to 7.00pm I didn't leave the room, except for a toilet break. Even my wife enjoyed some of the talks, she recommended the talk on Perl 6 by Ovid.
It was great to know I'm not alone, the places I've worked at tend to treat Perl as dead and shall be replaced, with such languages as Go and Haskell!!
But now I can show them Space Invaders running ubner Perl 6!
You jumped the gun; April is two months from now! :P