Questions for Survey about Perl
Gabor Szabo
I am preparing a survey of the Perl Ecosystem which will take the TPF
survey and extend it.
We will have questions about usage of Perl 5 and we think there should
be also questions
about Perl 6.
So far I came up with only one:
How much Perl 6 do you know ?
answers:
- none
- I read some of the docs and wrote small snippets of code
- I wrote module(s)
- I use it in production environment
I'd be happy to get your input on how else would you put this question or
what possible other answers you would allow.
If you have other ideas what you would like to ask the greater
Perl Ecosystem please let me know that too.
regards
Gabor
----
Gabor Szabo http://szabgab.com/
Perl Ecosystem Group http://perl-ecosystem.org/
Richard Hainsworth
there is a big gap between 'i wrote snippets' to 'i wrote modules'. How
about 'i have written programs to solve real problems' ?
How about a question on involvement in the perl6 development process, so
as to see how many people are following the process passively, and how
many are contributing in some way.
How about a question concerning respondents perceptions of perl6 as a
language they would like to use, or something comparing the language
with othr languages.
If these are in line with the aim of the survey and you want, I could
write the questions and provide possible graded answers.
Richard
Gabor Szabo
<ric...@rusrating.ru> wrote:
> Gabor,
>
> there is a big gap between 'i wrote snippets' to 'i wrote modules'. How
> about 'i have written programs to solve real problems' ?
>
> How about a question on involvement in the perl6 development process, so as
> to see how many people are following the process passively, and how many are
> contributing in some way.
>
> How about a question concerning respondents perceptions of perl6 as a
> language they would like to use, or something comparing the language with
> othr languages.
>
> If these are in line with the aim of the survey and you want, I could write
> the questions and provide possible graded answers.
>
These sound like good ideas.
We are interested both in usage and in the involvement of people in
the development of Perl 5/6, CPAN
and in the obstacles people see.
So in relation to what Katherine wrote earlier we should have a
question trying to figure out what are people waiting for before they
start using Perl 6.
Also I'd like to be able to figure out what could make more people
contribute to the development. On any levels so that would include
implementing part of Rakudo or writing tests or docs or any other area
of involvement.
The answers can be either single choice or multiple choice with a
limit to the number of choices and we can always provide a comment
field.
Your help in preparing the questions is appreciated!
regards
Gabor
Daniel Carrera
<ric...@rusrating.ru> wrote:
> Gabor,
>
> there is a big gap between 'i wrote snippets' to 'i wrote modules'. How
> about 'i have written programs to solve real problems' ?
I agree. Although I don't use Perl 6 in production yet, for Perl 5 I
can say that I've never written a module, but I've used it a lot in
production.
In fact... I might even suggest dropping the "modules" one, because
you might have used Perl 6 in production without ever writing a module
(as I have done for Perl 5). Unless you include toy modules that are
better categorized as "code snippets" for learning the language, in
which case they rank lower than "used Perl to solve real problems".
So I vote for removing the "modules" one.
I have another question: If you use Perl 6 for your research (e.g.
Masters thesis, PhD thesis, or university research), does that count
as "production environment" or just "real problems"?
Daniel.
--
No trees were destroyed in the generation of this email, but a large
number of electrons were severely inconvenienced.
Daniel Carrera
> So in relation to what Katherine wrote earlier we should have a
> question trying to figure out what are people waiting for before they
> start using Perl 6.
That's an excellent question. Possible answers:
* I'm waiting for a specific feature to be implemented in Rakudo.
* Rakudo is too slow.
* I didn't realize Rakudo was ready for use.
* Other [ fill in the blank ]
Moritz Lenz
On 12/29/2010 08:02 AM, Gabor Szabo wrote:
> I'd be happy to get your input on how else would you put this question or
> what possible other answers you would allow.
Here are some very rough ideas:
How much do you know about Perl 6?
* nothing except the name
* some design ideas or history
* enough for very simple programs
* solid knowledge
How do you keep informed about Perl 6 (multiple answers)?
* I don't
* general tech news sites (slashdot, reddit, lwn, ...)
* mailing lists
* Perl 6 specific blogs or blog aggregators
* other (please comment)
What do you think about the relation between 5 and 6
* I don't
* Perl 6 hurts Perl 5
* Perl 5 benefits from Perl 5
* The two are mostly independent
Cheers,
Moritz
Chas. Owens
snip
> What do you think about the relation between 5 and 6
> * I don't
> * Perl 6 hurts Perl 5
> * Perl 5 benefits from Perl 5
> * The two are mostly independent
As for the third option, I think Perl 5 is hurt by Perl 5, but
benefits from Perl 6.
--
Chas. Owens
wonkden.net
The most important skill a programmer can have is the ability to read.
Константин Городинский
I think my opinion would be just about the same as many others is:
1) The preface of specification book states that perl 6 is a NEW language
and it shares ideas with perl 5 and both equally benefit from each other- so
that gives a good question, why should I learn it if both cover the same
area of problems.(I did read the book many times though and I'm learning it)
2) Second issue is probably the lack of tools, such as ide(I use vim). It's
only recently I found out that there is such tool as Padre. I.e I use Arch
as a distro and padre isn't in a main repository(neither is rakudo, which
leads me to build it every time it comes out and make a package).
Best regards,
Konstantin
2010/12/29 Gabor Szabo <sza...@gmail.com>
Wendell Hatcher
Sent from my iPhone
Wendell Hatcher
Wendell...@comcast.net
303-520-7554
Blogsite: http://thoughtsofaperlprogrammer.typepad.com/blog
Paul Makepeace
> We will have questions about usage of Perl 5 and we think there should
> be also questions
> about Perl 6.
Should Perl 6 be called something else?
* No
* Yes, not sure what
* Yes, [____]
Maybe a question on perceived benefits for an alternative name.
(It's quite apparent this is a very different language at the very
least syntactically & I'm inclined to join others I've read in saying
"Yes")
Paul
Daniel Carrera
That would suggest that Larry Wall is soliciting ideas for a name
change, which is not the case.
I would not that it is not unheard of for a language to change
significantly but keep the name. If you look Fortran 2008 (just to
pick an example I'm familiar with) it looks *nothing* like FORTRAN II.
I'm no expert, but I believe K&R's original C language was noticeably
different from C99.
For amusement, below I include the same program in FORTRAN II and
Fortran 90. The program uses Heron's formula for finding the area of a
triangle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heron's_formula):
1) FORTRAN II (note that all the indentations are significant!!!)
C READ FROM CARD READER UNIT 5
READ INPUT TAPE 5, 501, IA, IB, IC
501 FORMAT (3I5)
C COMPUTE AREA
799 S = FLOATF (IA + IB + IC) / 2.0
AREA = SQRT( S * (S - FLOATF(IA)) * (S - FLOATF(IB)) *
+ (S - FLOATF(IC)))
C OUTPUT TO LINE PRINTER UNIT 6
WRITE OUTPUT TAPE 6, 601, IA, IB, IC, AREA
601 FORMAT (4H A= ,I5,5H B= ,I5,5H C= ,I5,8H AREA= ,F10.2,
+ 13H SQUARE UNITS)
STOP
END
2) Fortran 90:
program heron
integer :: a,b,c
real :: s, area
! Read from stdin.
read (*,*) a,b,c
! Compute the area.
s = ( a + b + c)/2
area = sqrt( s * (s-a) * (s-b) * (s-c) )
write (*,*) a,b,c,area
end program
Tom Christiansen
of "Fri, 31 Dec 2010 20:20:33 +0100."
> For amusement, below I include the same program
> in FORTRAN II and Fortran 90.
That was delightful -- thanks!
--tom
Chas. Owens
> I want to adding one more answer about what are people waiting for before they
> start using Perl 6.
>
> There hasn't an official release of PERL6.0, just Rakudo. I'm afraid of Rakudo is cancelled, I don't want to make my product based on an uncertainty matter.
snip
This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what Perl 6 is. As far
as I know there will never be a release of Perl 6.0 (it definitely
won't be PERL6.0). Perl 6 is a specification and a set of tests. Any
program that can pass the test suite and conforms to the specification
IS a Perl 6. Right now the program that passes the most tests and
conforms most closely to the specification is Rakudo.
Daniel Carrera
> On Wed, Dec 29, 2010 at 21:39, Xue, Brian <Bria...@amd.com> wrote:
>> I want to adding one more answer about what are people waiting for before they
>> start using Perl 6.
>>
>> There hasn't an official release of PERL6.0, just Rakudo. I'm afraid of Rakudo is cancelled, I don't want to make my product based on an uncertainty matter.
> snip
>
> This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what Perl 6 is. As far
> as I know there will never be a release of Perl 6.0 (it definitely
> won't be PERL6.0). Perl 6 is a specification and a set of tests. Any
> program that can pass the test suite and conforms to the specification
> IS a Perl 6. Right now the program that passes the most tests and
> conforms most closely to the specification is Rakudo.
But Xue still has a valid point that even the Perl 6 spec doesn't exist yet.
Richard Hainsworth
On 01/01/11 03:41, Daniel Carrera wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 1, 2011 at 1:26 AM, Chas. Owens<chas....@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Wed, Dec 29, 2010 at 21:39, Xue, Brian<Bria...@amd.com> wrote:
>>> I want to adding one more answer about what are people waiting for before they
>>> start using Perl 6.
>>>
>>> There hasn't an official release of PERL6.0, just Rakudo. I'm afraid of Rakudo is cancelled, I don't want to make my product based on an uncertainty matter.
>> snip
>>
>> This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what Perl 6 is. As far
>> as I know there will never be a release of Perl 6.0 (it definitely
>> won't be PERL6.0). Perl 6 is a specification and a set of tests. Any
>> program that can pass the test suite and conforms to the specification
>> IS a Perl 6. Right now the program that passes the most tests and
>> conforms most closely to the specification is Rakudo.
>
> But Xue still has a valid point that even the Perl 6 spec doesn't exist yet.
>
Moreover, a survey should be testing perceptions, even if the
perceptions contradict what some feel are facts. It sometimes pays to be
agnostic about what can be counted as a fact to learn how other people
think. Eg., in the real world there are those who perceive as fact the
timeline of the history of life as set out in the Old Testament of the
Bible, and there are those that look to other mechanisms for testing
timeline theories, such as a the geological record. Dont want to start a
religious war, just wanting to indicate that a survey can be useful if
worded in a value-free manner.
Darren Duncan
> Moreover, a survey should be testing perceptions, even if the
> perceptions contradict what some feel are facts. It sometimes pays to be
> agnostic about what can be counted as a fact to learn how other people
> think. Eg., in the real world there are those who perceive as fact the
> timeline of the history of life as set out in the Old Testament of the
> Bible, and there are those that look to other mechanisms for testing
> timeline theories, such as a the geological record. Dont want to start a
> religious war, just wanting to indicate that a survey can be useful if
> worded in a value-free manner.
There are also those who perceive as fact that the biblical and geological
timelines are not mutually exclusive and are both plausible. -- Darren Duncan
Gabor Szabo
>
>
> On 01/01/11 03:41, Daniel Carrera wrote:
>>
>> On Sat, Jan 1, 2011 at 1:26 AM, Chas. Owens<chas....@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> On Wed, Dec 29, 2010 at 21:39, Xue, Brian<Bria...@amd.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I want to adding one more answer about what are people waiting for
>>>> before they
>>>> start using Perl 6.
>>>>
>>>> There hasn't an official release of PERL6.0, just Rakudo. I'm afraid of
>>>> Rakudo is cancelled, I don't want to make my product based on an uncertainty
>>>> matter.
>>>
>>> snip
>>>
>>> This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what Perl 6 is. As far
>>> as I know there will never be a release of Perl 6.0 (it definitely
>>> won't be PERL6.0). Perl 6 is a specification and a set of tests. Any
>>> program that can pass the test suite and conforms to the specification
>>> IS a Perl 6. Right now the program that passes the most tests and
>>> conforms most closely to the specification is Rakudo.
>>
>> But Xue still has a valid point that even the Perl 6 spec doesn't exist
>> yet.
>>
> Moreover, a survey should be testing perceptions, even if the perceptions
> contradict what some feel are facts. It sometimes pays to be agnostic about
> what can be counted as a fact to learn how other people think.
[...]
> just wanting to
> indicate that a survey can be useful if worded in a value-free manner.
It would be nice to figure out what is the percentage of people who
don't yet look at Perl 6 because there was not official Perl 6.0
release
or in more general what are the blocking issues for them.
I just would like to make sure that by asking the question we don't
strengthen the belief that there ever will be an official Perl 6.0
release.
Of course that might be part of *my* misunderstanding that I think
there won't be such thing. I don't have trouble if the questions
and the possible answers already provide some form of education
pointing people to the possible real answers.
So for example:
I'll start learning Perl 6 (select one or more that fits your opinion)
*) when Larry Wall declares that Perl 6.0 is ready
*) after Rakudo 1.0 is released
*) when the default running perl -v in my Linux distribution will say
it is version 6.0 or later
*) After the Learning Perl 6th edition will be published
*) After DBI and DBD::Mysql is ported
*) never
*) I have already started to learn
Other:
What do you think?
regards
Gabor
Daniel Carrera
> It would be nice to figure out what is the percentage of people who
> don't yet look at Perl 6 because there was not official Perl 6.0
> release or in more general what are the blocking issues for them.
> I just would like to make sure that by asking the question we don't
> strengthen the belief that there ever will be an official Perl 6.0
> release.
>
> So for example:
>
> I'll start learning Perl 6 (select one or more that fits your opinion)
> *) when Larry Wall declares that Perl 6.0 is ready
> *) after Rakudo 1.0 is released
> *) when the default running perl -v in my Linux distribution will say
> it is version 6.0 or later
> *) After the Learning Perl 6th edition will be published
> *) After DBI and DBD::Mysql is ported
> *) never
> *) I have already started to learn
> Other:
>
> What do you think?
I think that's pretty good. Though personally, I can imagine the first
two not being mutually exclusive. That is, if Rakudo 1.0 is released
but Larry Wall hasn't said that Perl 6.0 is ready, I'd scratch my head
and wonder. In turn, if Perl 6.0 is ready and Rakudo hasn't released a
1.0 I might figure that they still need more time.
Daniel.
Moritz Lenz
> It would be nice to figure out what is the percentage of people who
> don't yet look at Perl 6 because there was not official Perl 6.0
> release
> or in more general what are the blocking issues for them.
> I just would like to make sure that by asking the question we don't
> strengthen the belief that there ever will be an official Perl 6.0
> release.
> Of course that might be part of *my* misunderstanding that I think
> there won't be such thing. I don't have trouble if the questions
> and the possible answers already provide some form of education
> pointing people to the possible real answers.
>
> So for example:
>
> I'll start learning Perl 6 (select one or more that fits your opinion)
> *) when Larry Wall declares that Perl 6.0 is ready
> *) after Rakudo 1.0 is released
Given the current version number scheme (year.month), it's highly
unlikely that we'll ever see a Rakudo 1.0.
So I'd change that to "after a production release of a Perl 6 compiler"
> *) when the default running perl -v in my Linux distribution will say
> it is version 6.0 or later
> *) After the Learning Perl 6th edition will be published
> *) After DBI and DBD::Mysql is ported
> *) never
> *) I have already started to learn
> Other:
>
>
> What do you think?
Maybe add
*) when it's about as fast as perl5
I think it's an interesting question.
Cheers,
Moritz
Daniel Carrera
> Given the current version number scheme (year.month), it's highly
> unlikely that we'll ever see a Rakudo 1.0.
>
> So I'd change that to "after a production release of a Perl 6 compiler"
People might be expecting that when Rakudo is ready it would have a
1.0 release. I sure did. Using year + month is nice in a way, but it
means that you don't immediately know if the release is production vs
devel, or whether it's a major vs minor release.
Daniel.
Patrick R. Michaud
> On Sat, Jan 1, 2011 at 12:36 PM, Moritz Lenz <mor...@faui2k3.org> wrote:
>
> > Given the current version number scheme (year.month), it's highly
> > unlikely that we'll ever see a Rakudo 1.0.
> >
> > So I'd change that to "after a production release of a Perl 6 compiler"
>
> People might be expecting that when Rakudo is ready it would have a
> 1.0 release. I sure did. Using year + month is nice in a way, but it
> means that you don't immediately know if the release is production vs
> devel, or whether it's a major vs minor release.
Out of curiosity (because I think it will illuminate some of the difficulty
Rakudo devs have in declaring something to be a "production release"):
- What constitues a "production release"?
- What was the first production release of Perl 4?
- What was the first production release of Perl 5?
- What was the first production release of Linux?
- At what point was each of the above declared a "production release";
was it concurrent with the release, or some time afterwards?
Pm
Guy Hulbert
> - What was the first production release of Linux?
> - At what point was each of the above declared a "production
> release";
> was it concurrent with the release, or some time afterwards?
Linus declared what his goals for 1.0 were and started a 0.9x series.
I think the transition was something like 0.12 -> 0.95 but when I
started using linux it was about 0.99c or so. I started in December and
the 1.0 was some time the following summer. I think the 0.95 (or
whatever) was about August/September.
Debian's first public release was something like 0.94rc6 but their
version numbers now look like: 3.0, 4.0, 5.0, 5.1 ...
I think freezing a subset of what you eventually want to have and then
getting as close as you can on a fairly tight schedule is the best way
to get buy-in from users.
Debian has a pretty good way to do this. Except for release-critical
bugs, I think they eventually just push all the rest into the next
release aobut a week before they publish the final product. I know that
this description is imprecise but you can see it what they really do in
their bug graphs.
--
--gh
Jan Ingvoldstad
> On Sun, 2011-02-01 at 10:27 -0600, Patrick R. Michaud wrote:
> > - What was the first production release of Linux?
> > - At what point was each of the above declared a "production
> > release";
> > was it concurrent with the release, or some time afterwards?
>
> Linus declared what his goals for 1.0 were and started a 0.9x series.
>
… and so on.
While this meta discussion is all very nice, I don't really see what it has
to do with the questionnaire.
Gabor didn't ask us to discuss the answers to the questions, he asked us to
come up with more questions that we would like to see answered.
At least have the decency to change the e-mail subject when the discussion's
subject has changed!
</curmudgeon>
--
Jan
Guy Hulbert
> At least have the decency to change the e-mail subject when the
> discussion's
> subject has changed!
IMO, the subject changed at the second post. I was just responding to P
Michaud who is the current principal developer of the s/w being
discussed.
<something rude>
--
--gh
Patrick R. Michaud
> On Sun, Jan 2, 2011 at 18:05, Guy Hulbert <gwhu...@eol.ca> wrote:
>
> On Sun, 2011-02-01 at 10:27 -0600, Patrick R. Michaud wrote:
> > - What was the first production release of Linux?
> > - At what point was each of the above declared a "production
> > release";
> > was it concurrent with the release, or some time afterwards?
>
> Linus declared what his goals for 1.0 were and started a 0.9x series.
>
>
> and so on.
>
> While this meta discussion is all very nice, I don't really see what it has to
> do with the questionnaire.
>
> Gabor didn't ask us to discuss the answers to the questions, he asked us to
> come up with more questions that we would like to see answered.
In order to put together a worthwhile survey, I think some "meta-discussions"
about the questons/answers we're likely to encounter are important. I also
think the existence of a survey itself is likely to re-open a variety of
otherwise dormant Perl 6 discussions and threads (as it already has), so we
should be cognizant of that potential impact.
Still, if others feel that the "production release" meta-discussion is too
far off-topic for consideration in the questionnaire, I'll let it drop here
and perhaps reintroduce it under another thread.
Pm
Jan Ingvoldstad
You guys stopped discussing the questionnaire a LONG time before PM
answered. There has hardly been a handful of helpful posts.
Getting back on topic, I, for one, would like to know how many people have
heard about Perl 6, and to what extent. I would like to know whether they
use it or not, and to what extent (already covered in some of the
suggestions), and I would like to know whether people like what they see or
not, and to which extent.
--
Jan
Guy Hulbert
> You guys stopped discussing the questionnaire a LONG time before PM
> answered. There has hardly been a handful of helpful posts.
That's what I said and that was my first post.
>
>
> Getting back on topic, I, for one, would like to know how many people
> have heard about Perl 6, and to what extent. I would like to know
> whether they use it or not, and to what extent (already covered in
> some of the suggestions), and I would like to know whether people like
> what they see or not, and to which extent.
Many people seem to be proposing questions which ask people's opinions
of things which are factual and can be answered readily by reading the
documentation.
For example, your question can be partly answered by looking at the
rakudo download page. There were about 3000 downloads of the July
release (I was one) and since then there have been less than 1000 (not
me) per month.
Personally, I have decided to finally make a commitment to writing a
perl6 app. This is not entirely due to the state of rakudo. The
biggest influence on my decision was the posting of the example of a
class which implements a rolled dice.
I've been interested in parrot and perl6 ever since they were announced
but I don't have a lot of time or expertise to contribute. So I
subscribed to this mailing list when I was finally convinced that perl6
was going to really happen.
--
--gh
Jan Ingvoldstad
> Many people seem to be proposing questions which ask people's opinions
> of things which are factual and can be answered readily by reading the
> documentation.
>
> For example, your question can be partly answered by looking at the
> rakudo download page. There were about 3000 downloads of the July
> release (I was one) and since then there have been less than 1000 (not
> me) per month.
>
That tells us that there is a lower download rate, to be sure, and that
might indicate a lower rate uptake.
It does not, however, answer any of the question_s_ I wanted asked, and
which others have wanted asked, not even partially.
There is a difference between simplified statistical aggregates and getting
responses from human beings, which are then analyzed.
The way in which you ask a question can, of course, also introduce a bias in
how the response appears.
If you ask:
"Do you think Perl 6 will ever be production ready?"
you may have introduced a negative bias in the question.
But with careful phrasing - something I've been sloppy with in this thread,
I'm sorry to say - then you can (probably) get the information you want.
--
Jan
Guy Hulbert
> It does not, however, answer any of the question_s_ I wanted asked, and
> which others have wanted asked, not even partially.
I haven't seen any such requests from you on this thread. Is this
discussion happening elsewhere as well ?
>
[snip]
> But with careful phrasing - something I've been sloppy with in this thread,
> I'm sorry to say - then you can (probably) get the information you want.
It seems to me "the information you want" is up to Gabor, who started
this thread. I'm looking back at his posts:
http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl6.users/2010/12/msg1366.html
==
I am preparing a survey of the Perl Ecosystem which will take the TPF
survey and extend it.
==
I'm not sure what 'TPF survey' is. Gabor has a URL:
http://perl-ecosystem.org/
in his original post, which was omitted from his follow-ups.
There are 3 more ideas here:
http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl6.users/2010/12/msg1369.html
The question of an official release arose here:
http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl6.users/2011/01/msg1388.html
Apart from the 'TPF survey'. The main thrust seems to be:
a) How to get people to use perl6.
b) How to get people to help develop it.
Seems to be a chicken and egg problem. I am about to start on (a) and
if I get anywhere, I will try to work on (b). So (a) seems to be more
important. I'm going to shut-up and look at the 'ecosystem' link now
and perhaps see if I can figure out what 'TPF survey' means.
BTW, one other thing that interested me is that padre supports perl6 and
can be got running on windows fairly easily now. My IDE is 'emacs' but
that does not help much with perl on windows ... so padre might be a
boost to perl6 adoption, if we believe that an important target for
perl6 is perl5 developers. Yes, I know that Gabor is responsible for
padre so tia.
--
--gh
Gabor Szabo
>
> I'm not sure what 'TPF survey' is.
http://survey.perlfoundation.org/
Gabor
Daniel Carrera
> Out of curiosity (because I think it will illuminate some of the difficulty
> Rakudo devs have in declaring something to be a "production release"):
>
> - What constitues a "production release"?
The developers judge that the software is reasonably feature complete,
and more importantly, it is robust enough to use in a "production"
environment such as a school or company website, where customers will
experience it. It does not mean that it is perfect, or fast. But the
programmer should have a reasonable expectation that it will work
correctly (aka as documented).
> - What was the first production release of Perl 4?
I never saw Perl 4, but I suspect 4.0.
> - What was the first production release of Perl 5?
I suspect 5.0.
> - What was the first production release of Linux?
I suspect 1.0
> - At what point was each of the above declared a "production release";
> was it concurrent with the release, or some time afterwards?
IMO, concurrent.
Daniel.
--
No trees were destroyed in the generation of this email. However, a
Daniel Carrera
> I think freezing a subset of what you eventually want to have and then
> getting as close as you can on a fairly tight schedule is the best way
> to get buy-in from users.
That is generally what I expect to see in a production release, yes. I
don't think it's a rule, but I expect to see a feature freeze, and a
period where you just look for bugs for the existing feature set, and
then comes the production release.
Daniel.
--
No trees were destroyed in the generation of this email. However, a
Gabor Szabo
On Sun, Jan 2, 2011 at 10:11 PM, Gabor Szabo <sza...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 2, 2011 at 10:08 PM, Guy Hulbert <gwhu...@eol.ca> wrote:
>> Thanks. Found that already. It does not list the questions asked and I
>> can't figure out how to download the PDF report or to clone the
>> repository it's in on github.
>>
>> I probably responeded to the survey but I won't remember without seeing
>> the questions.
>
> the same here, I am trying to reconstruct the questions based on the results.
> I also asked the help of Kieren Diment who ran the earlier survey.
>
> Gabor
>
Guy Hulbert
> >> Thanks. Found that already. It does not list the questions asked and I
> >> can't figure out how to download the PDF report or to clone the
> >> repository it's in on github.
Jan Involdstadt suggested I look at TPF website and following the link
to the 2009 survey, I figured out how to get the git url (they've
changed the interface since I was last there).
git clone git://github.com/singingfish/Data-PerlSurvey-2010.git
and
less Data-PerlSurvey-2010/data/all_data.csv
perldoc Data-PerlSurvey-2010/lib/Data/PerlSurvey/2010.pm
gives you most of what you need.
--
--gh
Gabor Szabo
I think it largely depends on who do you ask and I believe there will
be a huge gap between
private people and company people. Or between people who are involved
in open source
development and in-house developers.
I guess most people won't even be able to answer those questions.
While I am sure everyone has clear definitions and objective measurements <grin>
in the end most of us just have a feeling of "ok, this is good enough".
(We just don't talk about it publicly.)
Some kind of an official blessing is needed by most of us. This can
be Larry for Perl or Patrick for Rakudo or having it
"supplied by our vendor" (e.g. Ubuntu, Red Hat or ActiveState).
I think this is much less needed by the people on this list and
involved more or less in Perl 6 and needed a lot more by people external
to the process.
Or did you mean "declared by the developers themselves"?
Gabor
Gabor Szabo
> On 01/01/2011 10:15 AM, Gabor Szabo wrote:
>> So for example:
>>
>> I'll start learning Perl 6 (select one or more that fits your opinion)
>> *) when Larry Wall declares that Perl 6.0 is ready
>> *) after Rakudo 1.0 is released
>
> Given the current version number scheme (year.month), it's highly
> unlikely that we'll ever see a Rakudo 1.0.
>
> So I'd change that to "after a production release of a Perl 6 compiler"
I think I'll include both answers.
If we learn that people desperately need a 1.0 numbering then the
Rakudo developers
can make up their mind to either change the numbering scheme or invest more
in education of the users. Maybe pointing out that after releasing
2011.01 you can't release 1.0. :)
Gabor
ps. In Padre I try to stick to the "increase by 0.01 and not jump to 1.00".
It is surprising how many people tell us "I'll use Padre once 1.0 is released".
I can't even imagine how many people think the same but don't tell us.
Gabor Szabo
> On Wed, Dec 29, 2010 at 21:39, Xue, Brian <Bria...@amd.com> wrote:
>> I want to adding one more answer about what are people waiting for before they
>> start using Perl 6.
>>
>> There hasn't an official release of PERL6.0, just Rakudo. I'm afraid of Rakudo is cancelled, I don't want to make my product based on an uncertainty matter.
> snip
>
> This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what Perl 6 is.
I don't know if Brian had the misunderstanding or if he wanted to
point out that such
misunderstandings exist out there but this is not the point either.
I think there are lots of people (ok, among the few who have any
thought about Perl 6) that sound like
the above sentence. I think it might be useful to try to find this out
and later - maybe 6 months or a year from now -
see if the numbers change.
Gabor
Daniel Carrera
> I think it largely depends on who do you ask and I believe there will
> be a huge gap between private people and company people. Or between
> people who are involved in open source development and in-house developers.
I don't see the open source vs in-house point you are trying to make,
but I still agree with the general point that "production" partly
depends who you ask and what they need it for. For example, I expect
that most companies would tolerate more bugs in a program for internal
use than in a program intended for paying customers.
That said, I tried to give a vague notion in my earlier post.
"Production" means that the developers have given me some sort of
verbal assurance that the product is reasonably stable and can be
relied on to reasonably work as documented.
> Some kind of an official blessing is needed by most of us. This can
> be Larry for Perl or Patrick for Rakudo or having it
> "supplied by our vendor" (e.g. Ubuntu, Red Hat or ActiveState).
Yeah, something like that.
Daniel.
--
No trees were destroyed in the generation of this email. However, a
Daniel Carrera
>> So I'd change that to "after a production release of a Perl 6 compiler"
>
> I think I'll include both answers.
> If we learn that people desperately need a 1.0 numbering then the
> Rakudo developers
> can make up their mind to either change the numbering scheme or invest more
> in education of the users. Maybe pointing out that after releasing
> 2011.01 you can't release 1.0. :)
Not much chance of "educating" users. Release numbers have more or
less established standard meanings. It is impossible or impractical
for someone to be "educated" about the idiosyncratic numbering scheme
of every product they use. That's why there are standards, even if
they are informal. The "1.0 = ready" standard is well established in
the FOSS world (it even gets a paragraph in ESR's The Cathedral and
The Bazaar). People are not wrong to expect that "1.0" is the sign
that the product is ready and that 0.x means that it's still in a
state of flux.
FOSS numbering standards go further than that. It is extremely common
that products be numbered X.Y.Z where Y even indicates "stable
version" and Y odd indicates "development version". Perl 5 switched to
this numbering scheme years ago precisely because people were familiar
with it and understood it.
> ps. In Padre I try to stick to the "increase by 0.01 and not jump to 1.00".
> It is surprising how many people tell us "I'll use Padre once 1.0 is released".
> I can't even imagine how many people think the same but don't tell us.
Look at it from my point of view: I don't have time or energy to join
the Padre development list and track its progress in order to decide
for myself if it is ready for use. I certainly don't have the time or
energy or inclination to do that for every single software product I
use.
I will make exceptions for software that has a very long history. I
have no doubt that Emacs and Vi are stable, so I don't care what their
numbering scheme is. But for stuff that is new enough to make me
wonder, I will tend to wait for 1.0.
Daniel.
--
No trees were destroyed in the generation of this email. However, a
Daniel Carrera
that without a definitive release, potential users will tend to avoid
the software. For people not involved in the process (i.e. 99.995% of
Perl users) it is impossible to know when the software is good enough
for use. You may talk about strange attractors and orbits, but I
haven't the faintest clue how big the "orbit" of either Perl 6 or
Rakudo is. Therefore, I cannot recommend it to other people, and I
will hesitate to use it on anything that is very important.
Daniel.
On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 12:38 PM, Richard Hainsworth
<ric...@rusrating.ru> wrote:
>
>>>> So I'd change that to "after a production release of a Perl 6 compiler"
>>>
>> Out of curiosity (because I think it will illuminate some of the
>> difficulty
>> Rakudo devs have in declaring something to be a "production release"):
>>
>> - What constitues a "production release"?
>> - What was the first production release of Perl 4?
>> - What was the first production release of Perl 5?
>> - What was the first production release of Linux?
>> - At what point was each of the above declared a "production release";
>> was it concurrent with the release, or some time afterwards?
>>
>> Pm
>
> Larry responded to a post of mine asking about when Perl6 would be finished
> - the post was about the time that Pugs was still being actively developed.
> He pointed to the difference between the waterfall model and the strange
> attractor model for software development, perl6 progress being measured
> using the strange attractor model.
>
> Many of the questions and answers about a 'production release' imply the
> waterfall model. The concept here is that some one 'in authority' sets
> criteria which define 'finished'. Once the software / language / project
> fulfils the criteria - the edge of the waterfall - it is 'finished'. This
> has the advantage that everyone knows when to break out the champaign and
> have a party. It has the disadvantage that criteria of 'finished' can rarely
> be written in advance because to do so requires precognition, or knowledge
> of the future. Is there any sophisticated piece of software that is
> 'perfect', has no bugs, is easy to use? Was MS Vista 'production' quality?
> Perl 5.0 was quickly replaced by Perl 5.004 (I think), which include
> references.
>
> The strange attractor model implies a process that is never ending, in that
> there will always be deviations from the solution 'orbit' or 'path'.
> However, there comes a time when for most normal purposes, the solution
> orbit will be so 'narrow' that the blips will be not be noticed for most
> situations.
>
> In this respect, qualitative statements such as 'when developers accept it'
> or 'providers such as ActiveState etc' bundle it are recognition of the
> strange attractor measure of progress of Perl6.
>
> Personally, I think that we are in sight of acceptance for Rakudo Star. This
> is an implementation of a subset of Perl6. I also believe that when Rakudo
> begins to implement Sets, Macros and deals with the problems posed by GUI,
> we will see further changes in the Perl6 specification. It is unlikely that
> such changes will 'break' Rakudo *.
>
> A question that would be useful to ask is:
> When will Rakudo Star be useful for some of your purposes?
> a) It is already useful;
> b) When running precompiled Rakudo * versions for a test suite of example
> programs is as fast as running Perl5 versions, on average.
> c) When running (from human readable text to final result) Rakudo * versions
> for a test suite of example programs is as fast as Perl5 versions, on
> average.
> d) When Rakudo * implements a larger subset of Perl6 and/or access
> well-written C/C++ libraries efficiently, presupposing (c).
>
> Another question would be what should be in the test suite of example
> programs?
>
> The example programs are not the test suite, which verifies consistency with
> the specification. The example programs should be designed - I suggest - to
> test speed and memory footprint. Ultimately, programmers are interested in
> solutions that are quick and use least hardware resources (the human
> resource of writing a simple and understandable program being the strongest
> part of Perl6, at least I think so).
>
>
>
--
No trees were destroyed in the generation of this email. However, a
Wendell Hatcher
Sent from my iPhone
Wendell Hatcher
Wendell...@comcast.net
303-520-7554
Blogsite: http://thoughtsofaperlprogrammer.typepad.com/blog
On Jan 5, 2011, at 6:13 AM, "Anderson, Jim" <jim.an...@bankofamerica.com> wrote:
> Hear! Hear!
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Richard Hainsworth
It is blindingly obvious that the majority of language users, people who
do not have the resources (time, skill set, training) to test a language
before using it, will only start to use a language when it is
recommended by 'those in authority'. I would suggest that the
'popularity' of a language is more a function of how well it is adopted
by teachers of Computer Science at universities and colleges.
I think the issue of a version number is irrelevant, given the vested
interest of the developer to assign a number that will attract users, to
such an extent that there is rule of thumb never to use the first
release, but to wait until the version 'has matured'.
Even if the developers of "Rakudo" release a V1.0, would that in itself
lead to the acceptance of Perl6. I doubt it.
A great deal that is needed to demonstrate the stability and strength of
Perl6 for 'production' purposes has been included in the design from the
very beginning, namely, a MASSIVE test suite. Perl6 also has
documentation and specification and even teaching books, even before the
language has completely matured.
But for Rakudo to be widely adopted as Perl6, it seems to me there have
to be stronger criteria than a version number of 1.0, and a test suite
that is passed demonstrating adherence to a specification.
For my part, I already use Rakudo for nearly all my programming needs -
not that they are particularly burdensome or mission critical. The
elegance of the language in itself is a powerful reason to use it. I am
willing to deal with and work around the problems.
Even in this thread higher standards have been alluded to. But what are
they? How specifically can they be quantified?
Speed, memory, ease of use?
I suggest that Gabor's survey is one way of generating more input about
what Rakudo has to be in order for it to be considered 'production' quality.
Richard
On 01/05/11 16:13, Anderson, Jim wrote:
> Hear! Hear!
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Daniel Carrera [mailto:dcar...@gmail.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2011 7:15 AM
> To: Richard Hainsworth
> Cc: perl6...@perl.org
> Subject: Re: Production Release - was Re: Questions for Survey about Perl
>
Wendell Hatcher
Sent from my iPhone
Wendell Hatcher
Wendell...@comcast.net
303-520-7554
Blogsite: http://thoughtsofaperlprogrammer.typepad.com/blog
On Jan 5, 2011, at 9:31 AM, Richard Hainsworth <ric...@rusrating.ru> wrote:
> Without the development phenomenon of Perl6, it's difficult to see how Moose and other improvements in perl 5 would have occurred.
>
> Despite the frustrations in following the growth of Pugs, then Rakudo, it's been fun, worthwhile and inspiring. A bit like life really. Do you really want it to end? But until it ends, how can you tell what sort of person you are, or what your achievements have been?
>
> I love Perl6. Rukudo is great - already.
>
> On 01/05/11 17:21, Wendell Hatcher wrote:
>> There has been requests and talk of a production release for years now. Fancy titles released have come out monthly and quarterly for some time. At some point you have to say it simply isn't a good product or it is going to production how long are we going to hear excuses of my dog died past week and the production release is delayed for a year. Perl 6 at this point seems like a bad dream at best and there really isn't a need since moose and perl 5 have improved.
>>
>> Sent from my iPhone
>> Wendell Hatcher
>> Wendell...@comcast.net
>> 303-520-7554
>> Blogsite: http://thoughtsofaperlprogrammer.typepad.com/blog
>>
>>
>> On Jan 5, 2011, at 6:13 AM, "Anderson, Jim"<jim.an...@bankofamerica.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hear! Hear!
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Daniel Carrera [mailto:dcar...@gmail.com]
>>> Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2011 7:15 AM
>>> To: Richard Hainsworth
>>> Cc: perl6...@perl.org
>>> Subject: Re: Production Release - was Re: Questions for Survey about Perl
>>>
>>> Although everything you said is technically true, I must point out
>>> that without a definitive release, potential users will tend to avoid
>>> the software. For people not involved in the process (i.e. 99.995% of
>>> Perl users) it is impossible to know when the software is good enough
> <snip>
Jan Ingvoldstad
> Rakudo is not listed here:
> http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/
> Fixing that is something I'd like to help with.
>
> Note that go was listed *before* it was announced. That tells me that
> the go authors are, in some small way, more serious about their project
> "succeeding" than perl6.
>
> So your suggestion to Gabor is to add the question:
Do you think that NOT listing Rakudo at shootout.alioth.debian.org means
Rakudo is not a serious project?
Or did you have some other point?
(This is the first time I've seen shootout.alioth.debian.org, I won't claim
that it's not a serious shootout just because of that, BTW.)
--
Jan
Guy Hulbert
> On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 17:30, Guy Hulbert <gwhu...@eol.ca> wrote:
>
> > Rakudo is not listed here:
> > http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/
> > Fixing that is something I'd like to help with.
> >
> > Note that go was listed *before* it was announced. That tells me that
> > the go authors are, in some small way, more serious about their project
> > "succeeding" than perl6.
> >
> > So your suggestion to Gabor is to add the question:
No. The subject changed ...
>
> Do you think that NOT listing Rakudo at shootout.alioth.debian.org means
> Rakudo is not a serious project?
>
> Or did you have some other point?
Marketing.
>
> (This is the first time I've seen shootout.alioth.debian.org, I won't claim
> that it's not a serious shootout just because of that, BTW.)
When go was announced a link to 'shootout' was in the announcement. I
think I might have seen if before that but, if so, i'd forgotten so it
was new to me at the time.
What got me interested in perl6 was the april fools announcement about
parrot ostensibly by Larry and Guido. Something like 10 years ago.
I don't learn new programming languages unless I have something to do
with it. I've been looking at what it would take to implement
perl6/rakudo versions of the programs on 'shootout', and I think I can
do it so I will try to get one or two of them running properly in the
benchmarker.
The benchmarking program can be downloaded (which I've done) and comes
bundled with 2 or 3 python programs, one of which requires python 2.5
and I'm still on python 2.4 (don't ask). However I've figured out how
to see the source for example programs, so I'll manually download all
the perl5 and C ones and try to get the benchmarker going for those.
It'll take me a little while ...
--
--gh
Wendell Hatcher
Sent from my iPhone
Wendell Hatcher
Wendell...@comcast.net
303-520-7554
Blogsite: http://thoughtsofaperlprogrammer.typepad.com/blog
Richard Hainsworth
> On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 5:05 PM, Richard Hainsworth<ric...@rusrating.ru> wrote:
>
>> It is blindingly obvious that the majority of language users, ..., will only start to use a language
>> when it is recommended by 'those in authority'...
>>
>> I think the issue of a version number is irrelevant
> Wall is an authority, for example, it is reasonable to wait until he
> says that the Perl 6 spec is ready, and many will also wait until
> Rakudo claims to mostly comply with the Perl 6 spec.
From what Larry has already said, I dont think he ever will say the
Perl 6 spec is ready. The spec and the language are evolving together.
That is what the waterfall and attractor stuff was all about.
When I said 'in authority', I meant those opinion-makers (from bloggers
to journalists to heads of major software developers) who start saying
'xxx is a really cool language'.
> 2) Version number may not be relevant to you, but it is relevant to
> others. Therefore, it is relevant to the adoption of Perl 6.
And here it seems to me that you begin to prove the point I am trying to
make: version numbers are irrelevant as carriers of information about
usefulness, stability, or even maturity of product.
>> , given the vested
>> interest of the developer to assign a number that will attract users,
> That has not been my experience with FOSS projects. Rather, I think
> developers shy away from ever saying 1.0. For example, the JED editor
> has been around for a long time, but its version number is 0.99-19.
How can 0.99-19 mean anything? Does it mean under 1.0? If so, does this
meant that the developers of JED consider it to be unusable or 'not for
production purposes'? My entire point is that the version number, in of
itself, has no more meaning than what the developers want it to mean.
But acceptance is not determined by the developers.
> The Enlightenment window manager too 10 years before they were
> comfortable saying "1.0". This "fear of 1.0" was even the subject of a
> paragraph in Eric Raymond's The Cathedral and The Bazaar.
>> to such an extent that there is rule of thumb never to use the first release,
>> but to wait until the version 'has matured'.
> I've heard this in the Windows world,
Though I have been using Linux exclusively for about 5 years now, the
"Windows world" remains an order of magnitude larger. So again, if the
point is true in the Windows world, it seems I would win the argument.
> but I think the FOSS world
> version numbers tend to be lower. For example, I remember that
> Netscape 5.0 was equivalent to Mozilla 1.0.
Wasnt that due to organisational and ownership changes relating to the
development of Netscape?
>> Even if the developers of "Rakudo" release a V1.0, would that in itself lead
>> to the acceptance of Perl6. I doubt it.
> Necessary but not sufficient condition?
Not even necessary. Why not v0.99-xxxx?
>> A great deal that is needed to demonstrate the stability and strength of
>> Perl6 for 'production' purposes has been included in the design from the
>> very beginning, namely, a MASSIVE test suite.
> How many people, not involved in Perl 6, know that? See the point? I
> bet that you don't follow the development process of every single
> software package you use. For any given software package, 99.99% of
> users do not follow the developers list of look through the test
> suite.
You are again confirming a point I have tried to make. Most people do
not themselves try out new languages or indeed anything new until they
have read a recommendation from someone they trust. If I want a new
camera, I search the internet for reviews - I cant test each one. But
once I do settle on a choice, I then want the proof. Just because a
reviewer says its good, how do I know he / she isnt paid by the company?
The proof that software is stable and robust comes from testing. And
testing has been the foundation of the development of Perl6. When -
eventually - critics compare Perl6 to some other language and discuss
the robustness of the compiler, they will look at the size of the test
suites.
Richard
>
> Daniel.
Guy Hulbert
> I have to agree I don't think this is a serious project. In-fact at
> this point it seems like a bunch of friends working on a hobby in
> their basement.
I'm not sure I said anything to agree with. You seem to misinterpret my
intention.
[snip]
> >> Do you think that NOT listing Rakudo at shootout.alioth.debian.org means
> >> Rakudo is not a serious project?
> >>
> >> Or did you have some other point?
> >
> > Marketing.
What I meant was that a "serious project" pays attention to marketing.
The perl6 marketing effort is limited by resources more than go is.
[snip]
> > The benchmarking program can be downloaded (which I've done) and comes
> > bundled with 2 or 3 python programs, one of which requires python 2.5
> > and I'm still on python 2.4 (don't ask). However I've figured out how
> > to see the source for example programs, so I'll manually download all
> > the perl5 and C ones and try to get the benchmarker going for those.
Here's what I will attempt to reproduce:
http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=perl&lang2=gcc
I will start by downloading each program in C and perl (there seem to be
several C versions -- and sometimes several perl versions available) and
just running them appropriately.
> >
> > It'll take me a little while ...
I'm fairly busy. I'll report _any_ progress back to the list ... if you
don't hear from me by February 1st feel free to nag me. By 'progress',
I mean something on github.
--
--gh
Richard Hainsworth
For some 'serious' people, Perl6 is a 'serious project'. Concepts of
'serious' differ amongst reasonable people. Not a problem if your
'serious' aint my 'serious'.
As an aside, it took 358 years to prove Fermat's Last Theorem. Wiles -
who proved it - shut himself away for the five years he spent creating
the last part of the proof sequence. A number of historical figures have
looked at the problem.
That to my mind is a 'serious project' and serious people, and Wiles did
indeed work on it in a 'basement' as a 'hobby'. It was an obsession and
he was afraid of telling people what he was working on. But now we
consider him a hero.
Rakudo and Perl6 is being developed in the way it is for good and
practical reasons.
Richard
Daniel Carrera
> From what Larry has already said, I dont think he ever will say the Perl 6
> spec is ready. The spec and the language are evolving together. That is what
> the waterfall and attractor stuff was all about.
Not relevant. The question is whether people will take Perl 6
seriously without a Perl 6 spec. I think in general no, or at least
extremely slowly. Whether Larry Wall is happy with that is for Larry
Wall to decide. It's his language.
> When I said 'in authority', I meant those opinion-makers (from bloggers to
> journalists to heads of major software developers) who start saying 'xxx is
> a really cool language'.
That's just your personal preference. Other people have other views.
Personally I rarely care about what a blog says on these matters, and
I would certainly not consider a blogger or a journalist to be some
kind of authority. To me an authority has to, at least, know a lot
about the subject matter. For example, Rakudo developers. I really
don't understand why you would accept the word of a journalist as some
sort of authority but don't think that the word of the actual
developers, in the form of a release label or version number is
relevant. To me that sounds completely backwards.
>> 2) Version number may not be relevant to you, but it is relevant to
>> others. Therefore, it is relevant to the adoption of Perl 6.
>
> And here it seems to me that you begin to prove the point I am trying to
> make: version numbers are irrelevant as carriers of information about
> usefulness, stability, or even maturity of product.
I disagree. I have argued this at length already and explained how
version numbers are generally used in the FOSS world. There are only
so many times I'm willing to repeat myself.
> Though I have been using Linux exclusively for about 5 years now,
Ok, you are a relatively new user.
> When - eventually -
> critics compare Perl6 to some other language and discuss the robustness of
> the compiler, they will look at the size of the test suites.
If they are critics to begin with, the size of the test suite will not
impress them. They could just as well conclude that Perl 6 must have a
million corner cases and gotchas that have to be tested. I have never
seen a language review that I thought was worth reading that made a
point out of the number of tests.
Daniel.
Richard Hainsworth
Your idea is actually exactly what I was suggesting when I said 'example
programs'.
I think there are/were perl6 versions for the shootout problems. I am
not sure what happened to them.
Getting benchmarking will be interesting.
Regards,
Richard
Guy Hulbert
> 'serious project' ???
>
> For some 'serious' people, Perl6 is a 'serious project'. Concepts of
> 'serious' differ amongst reasonable people. Not a problem if your
> 'serious' aint my 'serious'.
For programming languages, there are rankings by number of developers.
A Historical Example
--------------------
==== ========
Date Number
==== ========
1979 1
1980 16
1981 38
1982 85
1983 ??+2
1984 ??+50
1985 500
1986 2,000
1987 4,000
1988 15,000
1989 50,000
1990 150,000
1991 400,000
==== ========
Taken from the language author's "Design and Evolution" book. Chapter 7.
My wife was sent on a course to learn this language in the early 1990s.
So you have about 10 years to get started.
--
--gh
Guy Hulbert
> Guy,
>
> Your idea is actually exactly what I was suggesting when I said
> 'example
> programs'.
What convinced me that rakudo is worth pursuing was the 3-line dice
class with a roll() method. What I do now is 'use fields' and build
from templates. I understood fields via 'perldoc -m' in far less time
than I've spent reading through Moose docs.
>
> I think there are/were perl6 versions for the shootout problems. I am
> not sure what happened to them.
I doubt they were posted on alioth. I think that a pre-requisite is:
apt-get install rakudo
on ubuntu.
>
> Getting benchmarking will be interesting.
I hope I have time. I'm planning to compile and run one C and one perl
program today and see if the outputs are the same (that's my
understanding, so far, of the requirements for alioth).
>
> Regards,
> Richard
--
--gh
Gabor Szabo
I think most of the open source projects have been in use by
many people in production environment before the project had
a "production release". I guess there are still places that think
Linux is not good for their production environment.
Probably it is true for all the projects Pm mentioned but a lot of others
as well. I remember I was using svn from v0.32 or so. In most technologies
I am a very late "early adopter".
I believe Rakudo and Perl 6 will see a gradual increase in use as
they improve, get faster, have more modules etc. It will probably happen a
long time before any official 1.0 release will be seen. (if ever)
It is very frustrating that the progress is so slow and I can't yet
use it for my daily work.
It would make both my programming life and my "marketing" life a lot
easier if I could use Rakudo at my clients.
But can I seriously complain about the slow progress?
Have I made a lot (or any) effort to help Rakudo?
I wish I had some time contributing to the effort.
Gabor
http://szabgab.com/
Guy Hulbert
> > Getting benchmarking will be interesting.
>
> I hope I have time. I'm planning to compile and run one C and one
> perl
> program today and see if the outputs are the same (that's my
> understanding, so far, of the requirements for alioth).
This is going to be interesting. So far I've tried two of the programs
but in neither case would the C version compile on my system (debian
etch) so I had to use python.
So I can run 'pidigits' in perl and python but both use the GNU GMP
library so I had to install the C library and then modules for each of
python and perl. However, it's not clear to me what is really being
bench-marked if GMP is doing all the work in each case.
Oh well.
So far I've just written a perl script to save pages by language and
program name from shootout.alioth.debian.org. However, the HTML is all
munged so I had to cut-and-paste the code into files from the browser.
I will try to see if there's any more sane way to do this but I think I
have to join the shootout project to post on their forum since they
no longer have an email list.
--
--gh
Stefan Hornburg (Racke)
Maybe we should focus on porting Perl 5 modules on hackathons around
the events and blog about the process.
Not that I did any serious shot at Perl 6 :-!
Regards
Racke
--
LinuXia Systems => http://www.linuxia.de/
Expert Interchange Consulting and System Administration
ICDEVGROUP => http://www.icdevgroup.org/
Interchange Development Team
Daniel Carrera
talk to Fortran 95.
I am going to use Fortran 95 for my thesis work, and maybe I could
write a module to give Rakudo a basic array language. Nothing fancy
like MATLAB, NumPy or PDL, but enough to try out algorithms and
prototype ideas. As it is, I'll probably use PDL or NumPy for that
purpose.
Daniel.
--
Guy Hulbert
On Thu, 2011-06-01 at 09:32 -0500, Guy Hulbert wrote:
> The algorithm was the ruelle-takens algorithm (ca 1979, iirc) to compute
> the fractal dimension of a series.
Google ( http://www.google.com/search?q=ruelle+takens+algorithm ) found:
http://www.emayzine.com/infoage/math/math2.htm
Looks like 1979 is about right.
--
--gh
Carl Mäsak
> I may have asked them why they did not map (A,C,G,T) -> (0,1,2,3) but
> since then, I've learned more about what GC-content implies in terms of
> chemistry -- it also seems to have evolutionary implications, about
> which I know nothing.
With this I can help at least, being schooled in molecular biology.
People who don't care much about biochemistry, feel free to ignore
this post, which is admittedly not about Perl 6.
DNA is ultimately to be turned into proteins, which make up our
bodies. The "genetic code" is a hash table from all possible triplets
of (A, C, G, T) -- so, 64 possible triplets -- to 21 amino acids that
chain up to make proteins. 21 is smaller than 64, so there's
"redundancy" in the genetic code (mathematicians would call this a
"non-injective mapping"). Since several triplets may map to the same
amino acid, there is some "wiggle room" in the choice of bases.
(Furthermore, some amino acids are chemically quite similar, giving
even more potential wiggle room.)
Now, let's say you're a thermophilic bacterium living around the hot
springs of Iceland. Your DNA is under a lot of stress from the heat,
and the bonds break up all the time. Something needs to be done,
stable DNA is important. You decide -- well, natural selection pushes
you as a group, really -- to favour GC bonds rather than AT bonds,
because a GC bond has three hydrogen bonds whereas an AT bond has only
two. You're constrained by the proteins you want to produce, but the
wiggle room allows you to favour GC bonds. Higher GC content -> more
hydrogen bonds -> sturdier DNA -> better survival.
Hopefully that also explains why the mapping in the algorithm can be
GC -> 1 and AT -> 0. From the viewpoint of hydrogen bonds, only this
simpler mapping matters.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_code>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GC-content>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Injective_function>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermophile>
Hope that helps,
// Carl
Guy Hulbert
> People who don't care much about biochemistry, feel free to ignore
> this post, which is admittedly not about Perl 6.
>
> DNA is ultimately to be turned into proteins, which make up our
> bodies.
I know all that ... I followed up privately to DC. I'll do the same for
you to clarify. I felt that describing an algorithm to the list was
probably on topic but the science is definitely not.
To clarify what I posted to the list.
When I said "evolutionary implications about which I know nothing", I
had already hinted (GIGO). I know quite a bit about what "biologists
think about evolutionary implications" but I don't believe in science by
consensus. Moreover this is an area where the consensus changes
rapidly.
--
--gh
Steffen Schwigon
> My point is make it a production release so peeps can push it to the
> powers that be in the corporate world.
Valid point.
Will http://packages.debian.org/experimental/rakudo be continued?
> This has been the longest production build in test in the history of
> mankind. If this was a real world project it would have been dead
> sometime ago.
Don't worry too much.
Python 3000 took about 8 years.
(Though not sure about betas for testing.)
Kind regards,
Steffen
--
Steffen Schwigon <s...@renormalist.net>
Dresden Perl Mongers <http://dresden-pm.org/>
Guy Hulbert
> > I will try to see if there's any more sane way to do this
>
>
Thank you very much. Trying CVS was on my list of things to do but that
will save me some time (and it was not the first thing on my mind).
I had obtained an alioth account about a year ago but did nothing with
it and it may have been cleaned up.
I've CCd the list.
--
--gh
Guy Hulbert
> I'm fairly busy. I'll report _any_ progress back to the list ... if you
> don't hear from me by February 1st feel free to nag me. By 'progress',
> I mean something on github.
I expect to get started (as defined above) before the beginning of
March. Nothing yet though.
Richard Hainsworth kindly contacted me today and he's started to work on
it as well.
I spent some time looking at what's out there and it seems that I should
post things on the perl6 wiki when they get going. I notice that some
of the links are broken.
I have one question but I'll post that separately.
--
--gh