[Reposted from An Anonymous Monk on perlmonks.org recently started a discussion on
"The current state of Perl 6" in which he (she? they?) offers his
views on various aspects of Perl 6 development. Personally, I
find nearly all of Anonymous Monk's comments in the thread to be
so devoid of logic and so far removed from reality/facts that it's
hard to imagine providing an adequate reply to them. Beyond that, I have other priorities in my life right now.
Uppermost is that my family is going through a very difficult
period at present -- I need to take care of them first. Rakudo and
Perl 6 come in at a somewhat distant second to that. Responding to
garbage being spouted by anonymous person(s) probably ought
to not even be anywhere on my radar. But at least one post in the thread bugs me sufficiently that
I'd like to respond, even if it's an inadequate response.
And I don't want my response buried in a thread somewhere, so it
gets its own post. Anonymous Monk writes: Who does Anonymous Monk think is working on Perl 6? Personally, I
have a Ph.D. in Computer Science and taught university language
courses for nearly 14 years. Damian Conway certainly also
has a fairly strong university background (Monash University) and
understands the theory and practice of language and compiler design.
Jonathan Worthington has a degree from the University of Cambridge,
where he specialized in compiler construction and formal languages.
Larry Wall has a degree in Natural and Artificial Languages
with two years of graduate work in Linguistics at U.C. Berkeley.
Many of our other key contributors also have degrees and backgrounds
in language theory and practice. I'd be willing to compare the
academic credentials of this group against any other dynamic
language team Anonymous Monk might care to postulate. Somehow I have trouble classifying Larry, Damian, Allison, etc. as
being "not real compiler people". And they along with many other
Perl 6 contributors have a lot of experience in nurturing open
source developers and projects. If you feel Larry et al. are
indeed unqualified to be working in the field of programming
language design and implementation, you probably don't want to
be using Perl at all, much less Perl 6. People like Anonymous Monk spew lots of opinions about how long
they think Perl 6 development should take, and then speculate on
the reasons why it has taken longer than they estimate it should
be taking. The speculations that crop up most often are things
like "the people involved are clueless about language
design/implementation" (see above), "the design process itself
is flawed", "they're building on an inadequate toolset like Parrot",
etc. For such people it's easy to toss out random thoughts about
"the problems with Perl 6" without bothering to look at
the obvious evidence to the contrary, as Anonymous Monk
does above. Indeed, I'm often amused when people suggest that
we should be doing things
that we're already doing. Returning to the topic of developing a grammar engine, which
Anonymous Monk claims above as "very simple" and just needing
"people skilled for this exact task", it's interesting to contrast
his opinions with the actual development of the Perl 6 standard grammar
(STD.pm6).
I think STD.pm6 is also indicative of the challenges confronting all
Perl 6 implementors. Consider:
Oh I'll tell you how you do that [write a grammar engine capable
of supporting Perl 6]. It's very simple. You get people skilled
for this exact task ! Those skills are acquired in
universities(preferably good ones) where professors teach
courses like "Formal Languages and Automata" or "Compiler
theory". If you have a bunch of people who are open-source
contributors but don't have the knowledge or haven't studied
the right things ... [t]hey don't know it in theory
and they're trying to put it in practice!
(emphasis in original)
If you can't get real compiler people
to use Perl6 and help with it, the average open-source rookie
won't be able to deal with this.
I think one could consider this to be an almost perfect situation for developing a new language implementation -- an experienced language designer/implementor working without significant external restrictions on top of an advanced programming platform like Perl 5. Yet it's been three years since Larry started working on this implementation of the standard grammar and parser, and while STD.pm6 is very powerful, it's also certainly not "finished", and has been through a number of significant refactors in its development. This says to me that the amount of time and effort involved is more likely due to the sheer audacity and ambition of what Perl 6 seeks to accomplish.
(Some will undoubtedly look at the above and knee-jerk respond with something like "If it's taken three years just to create the parser, then finishing a compiler will take far longer still and therefore Perl 6 will never see the light of day." This argument ignores the fact that other pieces are being implemented in parallel with Larry's work, that software development is not a strictly sequential process, and the obvious fact that there are already "working" Perl 6 implementations available.)
Anyone who thinks that Perl 6 is fundamentally based on traditional compiler construction techniques taught in universities frankly has no clue as to what a fundamental paradigm shift Perl 6 represents to language design and implementation. It's this fundamental change that ultimately gives Perl 6 its power, but it's also why Perl 6 development is not a trivial exercise that can be done by a few dedicated undergraduates. As TimToady on #perl6 says, "We already have lots of those kinds of languages."
Personally, I'm impressed and honored to be associated with the people who are working on Rakudo and Perl 6. I understand that people are frustrated (and even feel burned by) the long wait for something as cool as Perl 6; I share the frustration and like to think that I'm doing something constructive about it. But I also find the vast majority of suggestions, comments, and conclusions coming from Perl 6's anonymous detractors to be (1) things we've already done or are doing, (2) ungrounded in reality, (3) in direct contradiction to reasonably observable facts, or (4) attempts to discredit a product they have little interest in ever using themselves. And far too many of the comments, like the ones I've highlighted in this post, are so easily refuted with just a little bit of fact digging and common sense, it's often hard to believe anyone can be seriously making them in the first place. Yet there they are.
Returning to my original theme, I think my response here is inadequate because it leaves so many other of Anonymous Monk's claims in the thread unrefuted. I could undoubtedly spend many more hours analyzing and responding to the many fallacies and untruths in the thread, but frankly I don't believe that's the best use of my time. People such as Moritz Lenz, chromatic, Michael Schwern, and others are also writing extremely well-reasoned posts refuting the garbage, for which I'm grateful, but it's far easier for Anonymous Monk and his like to spin garbage than it is for a small number of us to clean up after it. And it does need to be cleaned up, otherwise it festers and results in even more public garbage that someone has to clean up.
I hope that this post will at least encourage more people in the Perl community to critically examine the things they hear and read regarding Perl 6, especially when coming from sources with no apparent standing or reputation within the community. And maybe a few more people will even assist in publicly refuting the garbage ("many hands make light work"), so that the sloppy thinking, analysis, and dialogue that people like Anonymous Monk post doesn't spread to infect all of Perl.
Pm
P.S.: Some may reasonably conclude from what I've written above that Perl 6 is somehow "aiming too high", that our goals should be scaled back to make something ready "right now". I have two responses to this: (1) we are making things ready 'right now', just grab any of the available packages and start working and reporting bugs, and (2) there are already 'scaled back' versions of Perl 6 appearing and being used, such as NQP or even the components that execute the standard grammar. Some of these other projects, like NQP, are being used for "real" programs and applications today; they're not simply theoretical exercises or research projects.
Others often claim that all this effort on Perl 6 would be better spent on improving Perl 5. In my experience, those of us working on Perl 6 have absolutely no qualms with seeing Perl 5 improve and continue to grow -- we welcome it. Indeed, many of the features appearing in Perl 5 today come directly from ideas and things first attempted in Perl 6, and we're genuinely happy to see that. But just because Perl 6 developers also like Perl 5 doesn't mean that doing Perl 5 core development is interesting to us, or that (in my case at least) we'd even be qualified to do Perl 5 core changes. We aren't commodity programmers that are interested in simply being unplugged from one project and into some other project that others think is more worthwhile. Personally, I'd prefer to see people who are really into Perl 5 improvements continue to work to make them happen, and that the surrounding ecosystem continue to evolve to enable that to happen more easily for more people. Indeed, this is my wish for all open-source projects, even the ones I don't find interesting or otherwise disagree with.
I am continually impressed with your calm, reasoned response to the onslaught of boorish armchair compiler designers. I don't know why people feel good about attacking other people, but it makes me feel good when I see responses like yours.
Re:thanks, Patrick
ank on 2010-06-14T19:53:04
Ricardo:
Years ago, I was talking with a few others in #perl about how cool perls features were, and you characterised that conversation as a "circle jerk." I wasn't aware of its meaning at that point, so I asked mugwump and he confirmed that it was a derogatory term.
When I see your response here, and Pmichaud's post, I have no option but to agree with your comment - this is indeed a "circle jerk."
Thanks, Patrick, and also all those others for really doing the hard work. And Thank you for preparing that concise answer. It certainly will not fix the opinions of anonymous persons fearing they could experience something they not already know. Don't care too much for them.
If anything then their appearance just demonstrates the heavy impact you work on.
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."
-- Theodore Roosevelt
You made some very good points (along with chromatic, moritz, Your Mother, petdance, CountZero and probably others) that people like me can use in other situations when talking about Perl 6 and Rakudo.
Thank you for your hard work and patience!
You rock!
Pm, that's wonderful on so many levels. I'd like to translate that into Chinese and repost with credit on my personal blog, if it's okay with you...
Also, reading your piece prompted me to add my own reply to chromatic++, as a practical exercise in sublimation of our collective memories.
All in all, thank you for carrying the torch forward, with a very sound design, and a much higher bus number by now.
Re:A wholesome and shining reply
pmichaud on 2010-04-23T17:04:55
Audrey-
I'd love to have it translated and reposted, so please feel free to do so.
(The same goes for others who might wish to broadcast this farther and wider.)
Pm
Re:A wholesome and shining reply
audreyt on 2010-05-02T05:14:34
I've just posted a translation on http://bit.ly/awTinN - It's translated verbatim except for a final ":-)" suffix.Thank you again for the wonderful post!
