There's been a heap of angst lately on the perl6-meta list about whether perl6 is too radical a jump from perl5, or whether it's not enough of a change. I've tried to get to the bottom of the worries voiced by people, but sometimes it feels like I'm trying to move sand with a sieve. No matter how many questions I ask and fevered brows I soothe, I never get the feeling that the people who were concerned are now happy.
At times I wonder how the hell all this became part of the Project Manager job description. And then I remember "oh that's right, there IS no job description" :-) I thought it'd be a simple matter to get specs, plan the coding, and launch ourselves gracefully into maintenance.
Now I see that I might as well have been dreaming of a date with a supermodel. Simply getting specs has seemed like an exercise in ulcer-production at times, what with the incredible number of RFCs, the backlash, and Larry being, well, Larry. :-)
But finally it's starting to build momentum. Larry's produced two Apocalypses, and is working on the third. Damian's begun explaining Larry's revelations, and Dan has gotten the Perl Design Document process rolling.
And still I have people saying to me that they think that perl6 is driven by marketing. Words can't convey the amount of boggling my mind is doing. If I were a convent of word-loving nuns with long winter nights and nothing but a gross of Milton-Bradley letter-dice-based games, I could not be boggling more.
I wish there was marketing. That'd imply there was something to market. But right now perl6 is still a clump of dividing cells. In the glorious language of the miracle of life that one learns when one breeds, perl6 is little beyond a blastocyst. It'll be a while before we have anything we want to try and market.
So much for the marketing conspiracy theory. Stay tuned for my next journal entry on perl6 when I'll talk about community involvement and structure. One thing those long and painfully unresolvable discussions about perl6 angst have been good for is getting me to think hard about what's going on. I have some definite things to do now as a result.
Yours,
--Nat
