Hacker News Reader

Comment by Moto7451 | Hacker News Reader

I agree with most of what is here save for the Perl 5/6 issue. Perl 5 needs a name change of some kind or another (Since Perl 6 isn't going anywhere or changing its name). You can't really write it off as people not "understanding how version numbering works" when the common way it works is by incrementing the major number when a new version is out.

View on HN

But that's my point. People do understand how version numbering works. But Perl is trying to change that by saying that Perl 6 isn't the next major version of Perl - it's just another language in the Perl family. I think that just confuses people.

Personally, my guess is that once the performance issues with Perl6 have been solved and there's proper Perl5 and CPAN integration, the whole sister-language-instead-of-next-version thing will go away.

Let's call it Sash 7.0. I can't figure out another pronunciation for $@%#.

I love Perl; I hate Perl. I wish Ruby was faster...

... and had CPAN. And all the tests. And decent Unicode. And a working taint mode. And the functionality of Moose.

You're right about Unicode and Moose. But I've never heard a Ruby programmer complain that there is no central repository for Ruby gems. Like, I don't know, rubygems.org .

Every language has one, but it doesn't come close to the breadth of CPAN. Much of it has to do with the culture set for maintainership. You have to achieve a certain kind of test coverage to get included, and if you are absent as a maintainer you package goes up for adoption.

I'm convinced that talking about CPAN as a unique thing just makes Perl programmers appear out of touch with regard to other languages. I am impressed with CPANTS, but saying "we have CPAN" isn't enough anymore.

Perl5 don't just needs a name change. It needs management and capable developers. Maybe the CPAN authors should take over. They keep continuing to produce quality software and updates. The number is the smallest problem they have.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com