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inactiveTopic Perl 6 Essentials / Chapter 1 / Project Overview
started 8/25/2003; 6:24:19 AM - last post 9/3/2003; 9:41:42 AM
Ehud Lamm - Perl 6 Essentials / Chapter 1 / Project Overview  blueArrow
8/25/2003; 6:24:19 AM (reads: 1366, responses: 3)
Perl 6 Essentials / Chapter 1 / Project Overview
The first chapter of Perl 6 Essentials is now online. It gives an overview of the project (and explains what "apocalypse" and "exegesis" mean, for those who are still wondering).


Posted to Misc-Books by Ehud Lamm on 8/25/03; 6:24:35 AM

Chris Rathman - Re: Perl 6 Essentials / Chapter 1 / Project Overview  blueArrow
8/25/2003; 11:14:49 AM (reads: 482, responses: 1)
What's the ETA on Perl 6? Must be RSN if there's a book.

Perl 6 sounds like it throws a mishmash of new features into the mix - pretty well the same way Perl has always evolved. More interesting is the Parrot project, which is at the front of trying to construct a Virtual Machine capable of being exploited by the various dynamic languages. The JVM hasn't really changed much in the past 10 years, and though MS has been much more friendly to suggested changes in the .Net VM, I don't think that dynamic languages are at the top of their priority list.

Chris - Re: Perl 6 Essentials / Chapter 1 / Project Overview  blueArrow
8/25/2003; 8:49:26 PM (reads: 450, responses: 0)
Parrot's developer Dan ??? has a bet with Python's Guide van Rossum that the Parrot VM can execute pure Python bytecode faster than the Python interpreter can. The loser gets a pie in the face at OSCON 2004 in Portland, OR. Dan says that Parrot is an order of magnitude faster than Perl 5.

"Now I know how the Lisp folks feel":

"Parrot is an order of magnitude faster than perl 5 doing equivalent things. Without enabling any extraordinary measures. You know how Python's performance rates against Perl 5. Do the math. I now understand why the Lisp folks are so peevish--they get this sort of dismissal constantly, despite the demonstrable strengths of Lisp."

Dan - Re: Perl 6 Essentials / Chapter 1 / Project Overview  blueArrow
9/3/2003; 9:41:42 AM (reads: 287, responses: 0)
What's both amusing and slightly embarrassing is watching chapters 5, 6, and 7 slowly become more and more incorrect as decisions that were made, or we decided not to make, have been changed or made. (The worst one was the paragraph that says essentially "CPS--cool and useful, but we aren't gonna do that" since we later decided we would do that...)