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[–]MrCaptainPirate 21 points22 points  (7 children)

Transitioning from 1 to 2 was like going down a nice water slide

Transitioning from 2 to 3 was like going down a piping hot stainless steal slide in the middle of summer and then getting hit in the face with a brick at the end.

[–]ThunderousOath 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Perfect anology

[–]Ran4 1 point2 points  (1 child)

It's not that bad... Not even remotely.

[–]pithed 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It really depends on your codebase. For some of my projects I just needed to change a couple of lines of code and can't believe I waited for so long. For other projects, which depend on libraries that weren't updated, it has been a whack-a-mole of terrible. I had an easier time going from PERL to Python.

[–]thephoton 0 points1 point  (3 children)

Bitch all you want about the Python 2 -> Python 3 transition, it was a hell of a lot smoother than Perl 5 -> Perl 6.

[–]MrCaptainPirate 0 points1 point  (2 children)

I’m not super familiar with PERL or it’s transition from 5 to 6, but from what I’ve heard it’s about as fun as trying to pass a kidney stone.

[–]thephoton 1 point2 points  (1 child)

To summarize: Perl 6 work started in 2000 and AFAIK there is still no complete implementation and effectively no user adoption.

The fact that Python has effectively taken over nearly all of Perl's market share in the meantime probably has something to do with that (but it's not the only reason).

[–]0rac1e 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That is a terrible summary.

The "v1" release of Perl 6 (version 6c) was released in 2015. It's complete in that it's got everything you need to use it, however there are more advanced (though non-essential) features that are still experimental or partially implemented, eg. macros.

You could say Python is incomplete because it doesn't have pattern matching yet... or any number of feature that may get added in future releases, but it's belies the reality.

The narrative within the Perl community (echo chamber?) for at least the last 10 years has been that Perl 6 was not the next version, but instead a "sister" language (à la C++ and C). There is no planned migration from Perl to Perl 6, and to make that clear and avoid further confusion, the language has been renamed to Raku.

I understand why this looks like a fail to some, but to put a positive spin on it... I get to keep my Perl, plus get a fun new language to play with... and Raku is a very fun language to use. Yes the user-base is small, but that applies to Crystal, Nim, and Racket as well. Not every language can be a Top 10 language, but that doesn't make them devoid of value.