Hello
It took a long time to come back, didn't it?
Just a few words to inform you that my blog entry "Today's Perl problem is popularity, not power" was published on the Free Software Magazine. It contains just my own personal opinion on how the Perl6 process is going, and everybody is free to comment wherever he/she sees fit, even if commenting on the source site is the preferred choice.
Ciao
--bronto
And Perl 6 has just come too late to save the day.
Can I borrow your time machine? I have two business plans that require backwards time travel. While I'm there, I might as well release a version of Perl 6.
Re:Uhh....
bronto on 2007-11-16T20:38:08
Hello chromatic
It might be because I am not a native english speaker but I think I don't understand the meaning of your comment. Anyway, since it sounds sarcastic, I could hazard a reply.
I don't mean to offend anybody, nor I want to denigrate the work that many people are donating to the project.
Nevertheless, during these seven years Perl has lost a lot of audience, that's the real thing. And even if Perl6 came out today it is not going to regain it all. It will retain the current audience of Perl5, and maybe gain some more, but the old times are gone. Definitely.
And, of course, this is my own, humble, personal opinion and nobody is forced to share it.
Ciao
--brontoRe:Uhh....
Ron Savage on 2007-11-16T20:48:26
You sound/very/ negative, but popularity comes and goes in waves (for all things, not just programming fads).
That suggests to me that Perl (6) can - but not necessarily will, of course - return to maximum popularity. One day.
When it is finally 'released' (define 'released'!) will be the time to promote it like mad, not before.
After all, it's not designed to be a success today, is it? It's going to be our platform for years to come. Right now I have no intention of using/struggling with it. I can wait. I just hope lots of other programmers are also waiting until some magic sign tells us it's ready to adopt despite fear of things like new syntax, subtle bugs, speed, etc. And no, it's not enough to say 'You can use it today'. That's not my impression, and I take the decisions around here:-).
Re:Uhh....
chromatic on 2007-11-16T21:24:14
Nevertheless, during these seven years Perl has lost a lot of audience, that's the real thing.How do you measure that?
And even if [Perl 6] came out today it is not going to regain it all. It will retain the current audience of [Perl 5], and maybe gain some more, but the old times are gone. Definitely.How do you measure that? Perl 6 isn't out yet. If it's not going to be successful, I want to know so I can stop wasting my time.
If you think it won't succeed, that's fine, and we can discuss that or not. You have your opinion and I have mine, and it doesn't really matter if we agree.
Now asserting that Perl 6 will fail even before its release is a far, far different thing, especially in an article purporting to promote the use of Perl. Pointing to the modification dates of Apocalypses and Exegeses as some sign that there's been little activity lately isn't evidence (especially because the reason behind their lack of updates is much more interesting and much more relevant).
Again, you're welcome to believe Perl 6 will succeed or fail or never get released. That's your right, and I support that -- but if you're going to put forth your opinion as strongly as you did, I want to see more reasoning and more evidence.
Re:Uhh....
bronto on 2007-11-20T21:50:16
Hello chromatic
Yes: I think that Perl6 is not going to gain a sensitive audience compared to what Perl5 has. That's what I wrote, it's my own, personal opinion, and in fact it is in my blog on FSM (no, it was not an article).
Let me stress again that I am not scorning what you and other people are doing to make Perl6 finally dock. Being into the "free software movement" (for whatever it means) for many years I know that people does what they can, when they can, and unless some "external intervention" comes up, no one can tell when a certain piece of software will be released (Debian GNU/Linux, my favourite distribution, is one good example of that).
I am not saying that Perl6 is going to fail. No, not at all. Go back, read it again. I'm not saying that.
I'm not criticizing the amount of effort you and others are putting into Perl6. No. My opinion is that you will succeed in improving the language and empower the people that are currently using Perl5 and all those that will want to give Perl a try. Nobody's questioning Perl5 power (not me), and nobody is saying that Perl6 would be worse than Perl5 (not me, again). I am talking about my personal feelings on the matter, that are shared by someone (like larsen on Perl.it or Roland Lammel here on FSM...), and not shared by others (like you).
About the point that popularity was not a goal for Perl6, I remember an article I read years ago that I can't find again (if someone has a pointer that would be greatly apreciated). That article told of a meeting about Perl's future held at OSCON2000, with Larry Wall and all other Perl's "core people" of that time. In that meeting someone (maybe brian d foy?) strongly said that if something didn't change, Perl was not going to succumb to Java and all the other emerging languages of the time. From that one could deduce that along the goal of making Perl better than Perl, there was also the goal to make Perl more popular.
I'm sure the objective of making Perl6 better than Perl5 will be achieved.
What I am questioning is that Perl6 is not going to make Perl more popular than before. And no metrics exist for that (as well as there probably aren't to measure whether Perl6 will be better than Perl5). These are opinions. If we talk about a "measurable" demonstration of an opinion, we are not talking about an opinion anymore, but about a truth. That's why I am not sure it does make sense to discuss the matter this way (in fact, I think this could be more spoiling for Perl6 thank my opinion alone).
But since you ask for numbers and facts, I'll do my best to bring them. Done that, I'm not going to discuss anymore unless the discussion cools a bit.
If you take the "State of the Onion" of 1999, Larry Wall showed a little statistic based on the job offers in dice.com (see http://www.perl.com/1999/08/onion/talk.html). Not finding any detail about that research anymore, I did my own little research a few hours ago for the following keywords:
* java
* c++
* c#
* Visual Basic
* Javascript
* perl
* PHP
* python
* cobol
* ruby
* smalltalk
Note I: c#, PHP ruby are newcomers compared to 1999 research;
Note II: the following numbers for Visual Basic are the sum of the research for "VB" and "Visual Basic"
This is what came out at around 15:30 GMT+1 on Sunday, November 18th:
1. java 17169
2. c++ 8424
3. c# 7656
4. Visual Basic 7228
5. Javascript 6771
6. Perl 5768
7. PHP 2384
8. python 1335
9. cobol 1146
10. ruby 672
11. smalltalk 68
So we have Perl at 6th place, 5th if you leave the C# newcomer out. Compared to the 1999 research, this is a -3/-2 places.
If we take the newcomers into account, perl has 9.84%; it's difficult to tell from the graphs how much it had in 1999 precisely, but it doesn't look that bad. If we don't take newcomers into account and we limit ourselves at the 1999 competitors, we have a 12.04%.
Now, every statistic should be interpreted. My interpretation is that Perl is less requested than more other languages, which means to me that it is less popular than before. By the way, it is almost keeping its market share, which means to me that he's keeping its old audience while the other emerging languages are competing between them for the top of the chart.
Now you have numbers, but you had opinions again -interpreting a statistic is giving an opinion, isn't it?
There could be more things to say, but this comment is too long already.
Ciao
--bronto
Re:Uhh....
chromatic on 2007-11-21T01:14:34
I'm trying to understand your argument. Emerging languages -- that is, languages released after Perl 5 -- are more popular than established languages and are crowding them out. No matter how new or different Perl 6 is from Perl 5, it will always be an established language and can never hope to be more popular than Perl 5 because it can never be an emerging language.
Do I have your argument correct, or am I missing something?
Re:Uhh....
bronto on 2007-11-21T09:31:11
Hello chromatic
thanks for asking. No, I am not saying that.
Let's take Java, for example.
What I am saying, and that's just my personal opinion, is that Perl6 should have come before to better compete with, say, Java.
One thing was trying to compete with Java 7 years ago, now it's a different matter. In the last 7 years Java has heavily deepened its roots into the ground, and it looks difficult to me for Perl6 to erode a sensitive portion of Java's user base.
Different reasons apply to other languages (e.g.: with C# and VB; let's just think at what's the platrform of choice for those languages, and who sells them along with a bunch of other crap), but I think you got the point now.
Is it clearer now?
Ciao
--brontoRe:Uhh....
chromatic on 2007-11-21T10:10:13
Okay, I'm glad you asked.
I don't speak for @Larry, but I don't care about eroding any of Java's user base with Perl 6. Not at all.
The way I figure it, there are at most a few dozen million existing programmers in the world, and they all have their own preferences for language and language family and platform and all of that. That's fine. They can use what they prefer and it doesn't really affect me.
I care a lot more about the six billion non-programmers, specifically about making a good language that they can use to solve their problems, from very small to very large. If it ends up taking ten years to produce a language and platform that can suit several billion users over the next twenty years, so be it. I can live with that.
