Nat quotes a few people saying "If Perl 6 doesn't come soon, I'm giving up."
There are dozens of people who've put in years of work on gobs of code that's available right now. There are large explanations of the new features, the internals, and the whole process.
Even with all of the changes and the new features, there are still thousands of tests for Perl 5 that test features that will work the same way in Perl 6 that could be ported right now to Perl 6.
Perl 6 is a labor of love for Larry and Damian (and many others). They could both be doing more lucrative work that doesn't do you any good. There are loads of individuals and several companies who've contributed to The Perl Foundation to help pay for their time.
There are also plenty of people who aren't waiting around as if Larry were to speak from Mount Sinai — they're writing code now, they're answering questions now, they're asking questions now, and they're offering suggestions now. They're writing documentation, reporting bugs, offering patches, finding new ways to make a proposed feature even better, and they're doing it now.
Maybe Perl 6 will come sooner if you help. Write a test. Write a paragraph of documentation. Report a bug. Submit a patch. Donate an hour's worth of wages. Pick one. Pick any.
If Perl 6 doesn't come soon, you're welcome to give up. So long. Godspeed. When Perl 6 is released, no one will have kept a list of people who walked away. You're welcome to use it then.
If you're really interested in seeing Perl 6 happen sooner, though, and not just trying to make everyone sad or whatever, there's a place for you.
If Perl 6 doesn't come soon you're giving up on what? Perl 6? So what. History is full of open source projects everyone gave up on that still came out pretty well. Mozilla is a pretty amazing example. Nobody thought a free UNIX would happen, either, and today we have several. Giving up on Perl 6 isn't going to hurt anyone except yourself; go away and return when it's blooming, if that's how you feel. (It's what I did.) Meanwhile, keep using Perl 5, which is clearly not going anywhere. It's even more clearly not going anywhere since the announcement of ponie.
Does that mean giving up on Perl in general? Giving up on Perl 5? That's silly. What does the arrival or nonarrival of Perl 6 have to do with whether your existing Perl 5 work continues to function? Anyone who said this and meant they were giving up on Perl totally is just a Perl bigot. Probably just trying to spread FUD and get people to migrate to their favorite language.
Re:Meaning what?
chromatic on 2003-07-17T20:50:45
Agreed, but I thought it would be more productive to say "Here's how you can make it arrive sooner" rather than "wah wah, whatever will we do without you, you twit!" Sometimes I do care about the feelings of other people, even though they're wrong.
:) Re:Meaning what?
jdavidb on 2003-07-18T00:07:33
Ah, okay. Point taken.
:) Personally, I believe the most important thing I did to make Perl 6 arrive sooner was to step out of the process. But maybe I could have done a little more.
;)
