Python moratorium and the future of 2.x

Posted Nov 12, 2009 7:18 UTC (Thu) by drag (guest, #31333)
In reply to: Python moratorium and the future of 2.x by felixfix
Parent article: Python moratorium and the future of 2.x

Last time I checked... Perl6 does not actually exist yet. It's been under development since 2000 or so and the ETA is 'sometime in 2010'. Meanwhile Python 3 is actually out and is usable. So forgive me if I choose true unicode support, cleaned up syntax, and proper handling of binary data over backwards compatibility with a non-existent-for-another-decade release. :)

Python moratorium and the future of 2.x

Posted Nov 12, 2009 8:37 UTC (Thu) by ptman (subscriber, #57271) [Link]

Perl6 does exists. It's not ready yet, though. There is an effort underway
to create a somewhat stable release of rakudo (one implementation) called
rakudo star in the spring.

Python moratorium and the future of 2.x

Posted Nov 12, 2009 8:44 UTC (Thu) by chromatic (guest, #26207) [Link] (8 responses)

Last time I checked... [Perl 6] does not actually exist yet.

I've had working Perl 6 code running for four and a half years. Rakudo (a Perl 6 implementation) will have its 23rd monthly release in a row in a week. The Rakudo spectest status page has an informative graph which, I believe, addresses your ontological questions.

Python moratorium and the future of 2.x

Posted Nov 12, 2009 13:54 UTC (Thu) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (6 responses)

So hows the backwards compatibility then? Can you just pull in Perl5 modules
from CPAN and have them work?

Python moratorium and the future of 2.x

Posted Nov 12, 2009 20:34 UTC (Thu) by chromatic (guest, #26207) [Link] (5 responses)

That's a work in progress; a project called Blizkost allows some interoperability with Perl 5 at the Parrot level. (XS modules complicate things somewhat, as you might expect... but the Blizkost approach is clever.)

Python moratorium and the future of 2.x

Posted Nov 12, 2009 22:17 UTC (Thu) by lysse (guest, #3190) [Link] (4 responses)

I believe "no" was the word for which you were reaching? (Possibly "not yet"?)

Python moratorium and the future of 2.x

Posted Nov 13, 2009 19:58 UTC (Fri) by chromatic (guest, #26207) [Link]

I haven't tried it, so I can't comment authoritatively on what works and doesn't work.

Python moratorium and the future of 2.x

Posted Nov 15, 2009 12:12 UTC (Sun) by IkeTo (subscriber, #2122) [Link] (2 responses)

> I believe "no" was the word for which you were reaching? (Possibly "not
> yet"?)

That depends on what the OP want. The design of Perl 6 definitely have backward compatibility addressed, at least so long as Perl extension module is not involved (i.e., there is no C code involved). The Perl 6 is designed to be based on a virtual machine (Parrot) that can interpret many different languages, Perl 5 is one of them. Then the Parrot engine can run many back-end languages at the same time, with objects of different languages cooperating in a fashion similar to Java dynamic language interface. Finally, the Perl 6 language is designed so that modules are distinguishable from Perl 5 modules by just looking at the first few tokens, so that the eventual VM can load a module and decide whether to use Perl 5 or Perl 6 back-end automatically. So the design is there, it's just an issue about when it actually enters implementation.

Python moratorium and the future of 2.x

Posted Nov 18, 2009 17:37 UTC (Wed) by cptskippy (guest, #62050) [Link]

So if I understand all of this correctly, the Python 3 implementation that I can download and use today sucks because it lacks a feature that Perl 6 supported since it's inception 10 years ago and I should disregard the fact that I can't actually use this feature in Perl 6 because no one has ever been able to create a complete implementation of Peal 6?

Python moratorium and the future of 2.x

Posted Nov 19, 2009 6:42 UTC (Thu) by lysse (guest, #3190) [Link]

I believe designs for time machines also exist.

Python moratorium and the future of 2.x

Posted Nov 15, 2009 5:57 UTC (Sun) by b7j0c (guest, #27559) [Link]

whoah, someone made a big commit on 9/28!

Python moratorium and the future of 2.x

Posted Nov 12, 2009 9:46 UTC (Thu) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link] (1 responses)

If Python has "true unicode support" then I'm very happy to work with some untrue
unicode support which actually works and is not as painfull...

But let's not start another language flamewar.

Python moratorium and the future of 2.x

Posted Nov 12, 2009 14:07 UTC (Thu) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

I don't care about Perl vs Python or anything like that. To each their own,
but there are definitely good and practical reasons why 3 is not backwards
compatible.

Anyways it's always been something normal to have multiple versions of
Python installed. I have 3 versions installed right now and while pure
python generally packages work across all of them, most complex modules
have some C code in them and you end up with a lot of multiple copies of
the same module.

--------------------------

As far as unicode support goes it is not a issue of 'true' vs 'untrue'
unicode support the difference is having 8-bit strings heavily overloaded
as the basic datatype for the entire implementation and every modules and
issues with data type conversions and mismatching string types a common
source of python bugs because unicode was tacked onto the language after
the fact versus having all strings be unicode and having a separate basic
byte datatype for storing data.

Python moratorium and the future of 2.x

Posted Nov 12, 2009 14:12 UTC (Thu) by felixfix (subscriber, #242) [Link]

And a language which exists officially but is not usable is better than a language which exists unofficially and is usable?

If a language exists but is unusable because it has no backwards compatibility, does it really exist? If said language emulates the tree in the forest by falling down, will anyone emulate listeners and hear it?