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Will Parrot ever truly deliver?

gabor on 2007-09-09T14:35:35

See blog here

Oh, is that you?

bart on 2007-09-09T19:04:36

I found it earlier today on http://programming.reddit.com/.

I too must say I can only wonder, after it has been in the works for 6 years. 6 years! (Is it even beta yet?) Some IT projects don't even have a life expectancy that long.

Re:Oh, is that you?

gabor on 2007-09-09T19:21:24

no, it's not me.

Re:Oh, is that you?

chromatic on 2007-09-10T02:11:29

Some IT projects don't even have a life expectancy that long.

Some IT projects have budgets.

Not an entirely fair criticism

kid51 on 2007-09-09T23:51:29

[Since entering a comment at the other site requires entering an "anti-spam word" but there are no instructions for that, I am entering my comment here at use.perl.org.]

Gabor wrote: "[b]usinesses often do not, or cannot, invest the time and effort to track a continually-moving target like Parrot."

I don't think this is a fair criticism. I wouldn't expect any profit-constrained business to track any alpha software -- which Parrot clearly is at this point. Parrot's current version is 0.4.15 and the developers have a clear idea of what constitutes, say, 0.5.0 and 1.0. Once we get to 1.0, then it becomes plausible to ask the developers to distinguish between 'stable' versions -- which businesses would presumably track -- and 'development' versions.

Re:Not an entirely fair criticism

Aristotle on 2007-09-10T02:35:08

Yeah, but isn’t that the point? Parrot’s still alpha – fair enough –, but it’s been in the works for six years already. When is it going to get to 1.0?

I’m not sure it’s a good argument – much depends on how much work has really been invested in those six years, and how quickly the project will settle once the groundwork has been laid down. But it’s a valid question.

Btw, it wasn’t Gabor who wrote that article, he merely linked it.

Re:Not an entirely fair criticism

chromatic on 2007-09-10T04:50:43

When is it going to get to 1.0?

When there are enough patches to add sufficient features and test and documentation and remove sufficient bugs to get to 1.0.

The Cost is fixed, so the only two knobs to adjust are Time and Scope.

Lack of corporate backers

kid51 on 2007-09-09T23:56:16

Gabor wrote: "The third issue is that Parrot never really seemed to get a powerful backer. Java has Sun. .NET has Microsoft. Mono has Novell."

So there's no point to a virtual machine unless it's the property of (or, at the very least, heavily subsidized by) a large corporation?

Re:Lack of corporate backers

chromatic on 2007-09-10T02:49:48

I think rather his (her?) point was that successful technologies attract corporate backing.

That's not true, but it's a different point.

Re:Lack of corporate backers

Alias on 2007-09-10T07:49:54

I thought his point was more that having a corporate with dollars pushing development to go faster helps make development go faster.