Larry Wall and Guido van Rossum, the respective creators of the
Perl and Python programming languages, have announced they will
jointly develop the next generation language Parrot.
See the press release below, read the Simon Cozens
interview
with Larry and Guido on perl.com, and check out the
O'Reilly book
in progress.
04/01/2001
SEBASTOPOL, CA
Perl and Python to begin joint development
Larry Wall, the creator of Perl, and Guido van Rossum, creator of
Python, today announced that their respective projects are about to
begin a period of joint development.
According to the language designers, the idea surfaced at last year's
Open Source Convention - "We at the Perl Conference were aware of a need
for a new direction for Perl and for its community, and that's why we
announced the work on Perl 6," said an excited Wall. "At the same Guido
was thinking very hard about Python 2.0 and where it was going, and we
got together and started talking about helping each other out."
Initially, the pair planned to have their development communities
working together for mutual benefit. van Rossum cited some of the
technical reasons for the collaboration: "Perl's highly powerful regular
expression engine would be integrated into Python, and would benefit us
greatly; in return, we've got a number of things right that Perl could
gain from, such as signal handling and robust software engineering."
However, as both designers talked about the changes their languages were
going through, they came to the conclusion that they had much to share
at the language level as well as the interpreter level. According to
Larry Wall, "Perl's always been about taking the best features of all
the other languages available; it's perfectly natural for us to
integrate the best features of Python too."
The specifications for the combined language, called Parrot, will be
documented in the forthcoming book "Programming Parrot", to be published
by O'Reilly and Associates. In the meantime, the Python Software
Foundation is said to be making arrangements to merge with Yet Another
Society. YAS president Kevin Lenzo was delighted at the move: "It's a
natural extension of what YAS was set up to facilitate - collaboration
and communication between programming communities."
Parrot development will begin with the merger of the Py3K development
team with the Perl 6 internals working group; Dan Sugalski and Jeremy
Hylton will be the joint development leads.
Larry Wall and Guido van Rossum both recently moved to the Vancouver,
Canada development company ActiveState. A spokesman for ActiveState said
that the company was obviously very pleased with the decision, but
denied that ActiveState had influenced it in any way.
Excellent news!
acme on 2001-04-01T14:32:28
This is fantastic news - I look forward to recoding all my Perl 4 scripts to the new language!
Great news!
Skud on 2001-04-01T15:06:42
This is great news, and can only be a good thing for Perl, Python, and open source programming in general. It's also great to finally see some of the results of Larry's long and mostly silent (grrr) work on Perl 6.
I know we can expect to see a lot of flames and argument over whether this is a good thing or not. I don't know whether it'll do any good, but I'd like to remind use.perl.org participants to try to remain civil throughout this discussion. Flaming achieves nothing and makes you look stupid.
K.
(just another parrot hacker?)
Bad News: MacPerl is dead
hanamaki on 2001-04-01T15:12:26
I just got a sad mail from the Tokyo office:
After fully understanding the design of Parrot, Pudge (Chris Nandor) deserted duty, and abanded the half done port of MacPerl 5.6.
It seems that he is going to become an officer of Matz' Ruby (not Rugby!) team, in charge of the orphaned MacRuby port.
Even Larry Wall is learning Japanese these days. Kids take that serious!
Andreas Marcel
(just another perl2ruby hacker)
April Fools Joke?
jddwoody on 2001-04-01T15:43:12
If it is, it's a really good one, the O'Reilly link even worked...
:)
Re:Great news!
Mark Thomas on 2001-04-01T17:46:23
Flaming achieves nothing and makes you look stupid
But falling for the April Fool's joke makes you look like a complete idiot.
April Fools!
jjn1056 on 2001-04-01T19:02:12
See, this is what's wrong with the Java comunity. Go to http://www.java.sun.com/ and tell me if you find one april fools trick.
They had me going almost halfway down the article. The code examples are what gave it away. Still, it would have been better if they put the word "April Fools" in the meta tags, for those who like to look.
The thing that made this so believable is that part of it is true, I think. I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that activestate was porting both python and perl to the new
.Net Common Runtime Language. This will be good for perl, because python can already be compiled into java bytecode.
oh, letdown
Bumppo on 2001-04-01T21:09:14
Until I got to the code samples in the interview, I was holding out hope that the prank lay in the announcement's truthfulness. I mean, what better way or day to announce such a loopy, wonderful idea?
It would have been no more loopy and no less wonderful than Perl 6, at any rate.
Notice the date
-wUT on 2001-04-01T21:23:21
gotcha...
Re:April Fools Joke?
idle on 2001-04-01T21:40:41
what's really impressive is that there's already a book released even tho they're still talking about it!
now that's planning ahead...
The april fool's fun never stops
jjohn on 2001-04-02T02:48:25
Slashdot, Use.Perl, O'Reilly. I laughed. I cried.
Re:The april fool's fun never stops
quinkan on 2001-04-02T10:09:59
Maybe:
'E's not pinin'! 'E's passed on!
... This parrot is no more!
He has ceased to be! 'E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker!
'E's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace! If you
hadn't nailed 'im to the perch 'e'd be pushing up the daisies!
'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory! 'E's off the twig!
'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run
down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!!
THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!!
Re:Great news!
duff on 2001-04-02T14:16:55
But falling for the April Fool's joke makes you look like a complete idiot.
What's worse is when you call someone an idiot without knowing if they are in on the joke.
Re:April Fools Joke?
duff on 2001-04-02T14:18:58
April Fools Joke? (Score:1)
If it is, it's a really good one, the O'Reilly link even worked... :)
Not to mention (but I am) that the story also shows up on www.python.org.
It's pushing up the daisies!
glauber on 2001-04-04T14:14:59
This language wouldn't "voom" if you put 10,000 volts through it!
This was great! The language name was perfect.
Weirdly, the most incredible part, the one about Larry and Guido both being assimilated by Activestate, is real! :-)
