ES4 has overspent its complexity budget in order to explore a large design space. It is now shrinking to meet practical budgets involving Ecma member consensus, prime mover commitments, fatigue effects, community expectations, and the like. No one working on ES4 wants it to be like Perl 6. We aim to finish this year.
— Brendan Eich, Complexity Tax
If I estimate with any degree of accuracy, Brendan alone has earned more in salary over the course of JavaScript's lifetime than every paid contributor to Perl 6 has earned in combination throughout that project. I can sort of imagine that a few of the other people involved with ES4 have received a few dollars too.
Fairer comparisons, please.
Re:well...
chromatic on 2008-03-27T22:33:09
I have difficulty with conversations about software project schedules and scope which include comparisons to Perl 6 but neglect to mention the budget of Perl 6. That's all. If the ES4 committee spent on ES4 what Perl 6 has cost in real dollars so far, ES4 would be a great language for writing
alert( "Hello, world!" );. They might even have money left over for doughnuts.Re:well...
Matts on 2008-03-27T22:41:03
Well nobody's donated time is "free", so I don't think that's entirely fair either. It's impossible to calculate.Re:well...
chromatic on 2008-03-27T22:55:29
Sure, but I believe that any Reasonable Person would look at a schedule that relies on hordes of volunteers who put in 40-hour weeks and say "This might be optimistic."
Re:how about perl 1-5
chromatic on 2008-03-28T00:54:41
I don't care about calendar time. Let's compare paid developer time.
Re:how about perl 1-5
adiabat on 2008-03-28T05:01:24
The "contribute money" page at donate.perlfoundation.org does not allow you to explicitly specify "I want my donation to go towards Perl 6 development".
Seems like it would be nice if there was an easy and centralized way for money contributors to pump cash directly into specific tasks needing to be done for Perl 6... Not sure how fair this would work out in practice though.
Re:how about perl 1-5
hfb on 2008-03-28T13:28:22
Ever since P6 was a project and a divisive one at that, I asked that such a restricted giving mechanism be put in place so that people could direct their donations to the projects they were interested in. I'm still waiting. It'll likely happen about the same time P6 is released.:) Re:how about perl 1-5
adiabat on 2008-03-29T01:05:10
There has to be some reason why that extra combo box item is missing, otherwise it would've been added already.
Re:how about perl 1-5
hfb on 2008-03-29T01:33:15
Well, it's a lot more complicated than a 'combo box', you need a good accountant and the ability to be accountable to the donors.Re:how about perl 1-5
link on 2008-03-28T14:41:32
Calendar is all I can really compare. If someone of greater knowledge than I wants to list out the people paid full time to develop perl 1-5 then they can. If not I'm happy enough to keep on assuming 1-5 is compatible to 6 in this respect but produced a final product.Re:how about perl 1-5
educated_foo on 2008-03-28T19:22:40
Well, if there's no schedule, I'm less likely to become an available worker...Re:how about perl 1-5
educated_foo on 2008-03-28T19:25:27
Sorry, this was meant to be a reply to parent (chromatic).Re:how about perl 1-5
chromatic on 2008-03-28T20:09:53
Schedules for projects with full-time paid workers are difficult enough to create. Any schedule for a project which relies chiefly on volunteers working in their spare time is going to be, at best, a fairy tale. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.
Re:how about perl 1-5
educated_foo on 2008-03-30T15:04:54
Sorry, instead of "schedule" I should have said "roadmap." All it takes to have a roadmap is one leader willing to make plans, and if the plans are good enough, people will volunteer. Perl 6 (well, Parrot mostly) just wanders in circles. How many half-baked intermediate languages and half-done Scheme interpreters does the world need?Re:how about perl 1-5
chromatic on 2008-03-30T17:21:39
Perl 6 (well, Parrot mostly) just wanders in circles.Rakudo and Parrot both have roadmaps with defined milestones. See the Rakudo roadmap and Parrot release planning.
...if the plans are good enough, people will volunteer. That never happened for Perl 5. p5p's lucky if people even download release candidates. Why would you believe that Perl 6 or Parrot will be any different?
Re:how about perl 1-5
educated_foo on 2008-03-30T18:25:44
Skepticism about a roadmap for a project that's been wandering in circles for 6 years seems reasonable. (And are there specs for those things on the Parrot roadmap? Are those specs subject to random editing after one starts implementing them?)As for Perl 5... First, there's a big difference excitement-wise between "be our tester" and "write this code." There's a reason I don't apply for testing jobs. Second, Perl 5 just released something I can use, no?
Re:how about perl 1-5
chromatic on 2008-03-30T21:12:16
Skepticism about a roadmap for a project that's been wandering in circles for 6 years seems reasonable.We've been hitting those milestones for a year now. We don't do any work in secret. It's all public. Everyone can see our successes and failures if they only care to look. Our weekly Parrot status meetings have been open to the public for years and we've published the minutes of those for years. I've personally published the minutes of the weekly Perl 6 design meetings for months, if not years.
If you have concrete, specific suggestions to make all of this information clearer and more available, please don't hesitate to bring it up in the #parrot or #perl6 IRC channels or on one of the mailing lists. The answers to your parenthetical questions are likewise available. (I even edited the Wikipedia entry for Parrot over a year ago to answer them.)
As for Perl 5...... volunteers don't magically appear no matter how much pixie dust you sprinkle around the world's best plan. The Parrot website has a list of dozens of available tasks for volunteers, and those tasks include both estimates of the time and work necessary as well as the skills needed. We've had that list likewise for years, and I'm about to start doing those tasks myself because they're not getting done and we need to get them done.
So-called "Open Source" projects that turn into dick slapping contests over the size of the budgets miss their own irony. Buy your own damn donuts.
Welcome Back, Elaine!
chromatic on 2008-03-28T03:59:03
Should we buy you a violin, son?I already have one, but it would be just swell if you could teach the Internet the basics of project management, and specifically the relationship between available workers and a schedule.
Re:Welcome Back, Elaine!
hfb on 2008-03-28T13:15:08
Well, only after you teach the Masters course in Why we should give a fuck if you all are getting a salary on the same level as another project with lots of commercial application and backers.It reminds me of the guy who did the original "Fools Errand" crypto game for the Mac. He announced he was working on the sequel for OSX and invited people to pay early (Damn you, pudge
:)) Now, this was around the time Perl6 was announced. Six years ago I would have loved to have that game for hours and hours of enjoyment but every 6 months or so he sends out some excuse about not getting the game done and declares it will be done soon. Well, you know, after a while you get used to the idea that you aren't ever going to see it and it was $35 poorly spent but it'll be a nice curiosity if it ever does materialise. I don't think people are sending him monthly donations to keep him going. Re:Welcome Back, Elaine!
chromatic on 2008-03-28T18:05:03
Until sixty seconds ago, I thought that anyone who had spent any time at all around Jarkko, for example, would know the connection between the available free time of volunteers and the amount of practical work accomplished on a project.
You don't have to care about any project, of course, but you don't have the right to tell volunteers what they should or shouldn't be working on or how much time they should or shouldn't spend on a project.
Re:Welcome Back, Elaine!
hfb on 2008-03-28T18:26:39
What, project management has become an exercise in whining about not getting paid? Jarkko had a day job and he spent all of his time outside of that day job on Perl. I'm not sure had someone been offering money that they could have afforded him. If anyone has less pity than me for the lot of you working for nothing I'd like to meet them.Do or don't but getting all bent out of shape over someone making a comment that may lead to Perl6 being a synonym for an eternal project isn't a way to generate sympathy or cash donations.
Re:Welcome Back, Elaine!
chromatic on 2008-03-28T19:24:35
Jarkko had a day job and he spent all of his time outside of that day job on Perl.I can imagine you expressing strong words toward anyone who criticized the release schedule of Perl 5.8 for similar reasons. Lest you think I'm begging for money, let me be exceedingly clear about my point.
See Spot. See Spot program. See Spot program four hours a week in his spare time.
See Jane. See Jane program. See Jane program forty hours a week in her job.
See Jane accomplish roughly an order of magnitude more work than Spot. Whack! Bad Spot. No biscuit.
Re:Welcome Back, Elaine!
hfb on 2008-03-28T19:47:19
I believe the thanks Jarkko got when he released 5.8 was a lot of grumbling about 'core bloat'. Although one person did send along a bottle of single malt. There were plenty of critics all along the way and his magnanimous public face was not always so at home. I would have intervened if he had decided to continue past 5 years of sadomaschochistic behaviour such as being the pumpkin is. I doubt 5.8 would have been released any sooner had he been on the payroll. I am similarly skeptical for P6.Jane ain't gonna get a regular paycheck for P6 so Jane better cheer up and get on with it or find a more rewarding hobby...like getting root canals.
Re:Welcome Back, Elaine!
chromatic on 2008-03-28T20:11:52
Jane ain't gonna get a regular paycheck for P6 so Jane better cheer up and get on with it or find a more rewarding hobby...like getting root canals.This Jane would settle for a significant portion of the people who complain about the large gestation period of Perl 6 acknowledging that volunteers do not and will not work on predictable schedules.
I don't care if I never get paid for any of my work on this. That was never my goal nor a motivating factor. I want to use the results and I want other people to be able to use the results.
I believe the thanks Jarkko got when he released 5.8 was a lot of grumbling about 'core bloat'.Jarkko (and all of the other pumpkings) have my unending respect and my highest gratitude.
Re:Welcome Back, Elaine!
hfb on 2008-03-28T21:26:10
Paid programmers generally dont' and won't work on predictable schedules.:) I don't know that people complain so much about the long dev time for P6 anymore, they talk about it and many don't have any expectations that it will ever come to pass. Lowering expectations is less a criticism than bracing for reality. And after so many years, really, wouldn't you be prepared for that eventuality? 5.10 had some problems for a while in this vein, but fires got lit under asses and things got moving again. If 5.10 was still at 5.9X wouldn't you be thinking that it was a bit excessively long to wait?
Jane should keep her eye on the prize and read less on the net.
:) Re:Welcome Back, Elaine!
chromatic on 2008-03-28T21:42:18
Jane should keep her eye on the prize and read less on the net.:) Jane needs to do something between Valgrind and test suite runs. Maybe Jane needs a better micro hobby!
Re:Welcome Back, Elaine!
TeeJay on 2008-04-01T13:17:48
I would suggest installing the meetime plugin for firefox and/or a greasemonkey script to filter out all the discussions about perl 6 not being here yet, and instead updating the page I started but haven't been able to update on the perl 6 wiki that goes some way to answering the 'are we there yet' question : http://www.perlfoundation.org/perl6/index.cgi?what_can_i_do_with_perl_6_today
This has 2 benefits
- one discussing perl 6 on internet discussion forums isn't going to make you happier (how often is the result positive vs a waste of time) and usually there *will* be somebody else who will defend perl 6 if you get on with something else instead, 999/1000 times they can just copy one of your earlier answers.
- two I think that page could both boost morale and keep people like me who don't have much time a quick way to see what they could do in a way that is easier for somebody external to the project to follow than milestones.
Anyway - thanks for the hard work:)
