It was over ten years ago that Larry Wall, the genius who invented the perl language, announced that development of perl 6 was a go. This was to be a radically different version of perl, but development is still ongoing and quite frankly, hardly anybody seems to care anymore.
Like many, I was a fanatical perl programmer at one time, when it was simply the only real choice as a robust scripting language for web-based applications. Php was buggy back then, and nowhere near as complete as it now is. But php got better and better still, quickly replacing perl as programmers’ preferred scripting language. Perl didn’t evolve much, leaving a lot of functionality outside the core, requiring you to install CPAN modules to perform tasks which by then were built into php. Php became the “Swiss army knife” language that perl used to be.
Perhaps the lack of funding is what has hampered perl 6′s development, as its volunteer coders insinuate, but you have to wonder if they’re flogging a dead horse at this stage. Few people use perl anymore, and the learning curb for perl 6 promises to be steep, even if you’re familiar with perl 5. With php, ruby and python solidly anchored as the preferred scripting languages, will many bother with the born again perl?
When will perl 6 finally be released? Their answer: “when it’s ready”. Sounds like next to never!
Perl 6 page.
