Now, Wall is taking another step closer to his ideal. Instead of trying to generate all the ideas for Perl 6 on his own, Wall asked the Perl community to submit Requests for Comment (RFCs) on suggestions for the language. As he said during one of his so-called "State of the Onion" speeches, "Perl 5 was my rewrite of Perl. I want Perl 6 to be the community's rewrite of Perl...."

The community brainstorming session that followed Wall's announcement generated more than 300 RFCs. Of course, not all of those ideas were accepted, but Wall now has quite a bit of brainpower to work with in addition to his own.

Apocalypse Now

Since receiving the RFCs, Wall has been writing design documents for Perl 6, curiously titled "Apocalypses." Generally, we think of an apocalypse as something that destroys -- but the word also has another meaning, "something that reveals." This is exactly what Wall is doing via his missives -- revealing the design of Perl 6.

Wall has finished five of these Apocalypses so far, and he plans to release a few more. In the documents, he explains why some RFCs have been accepted and why others have been rejected. He also has taken the initiative to make changes where he feels they are needed, even if none of the RFCs addresses a particular issue.

Major Renovation

It is an accepted fact that all projects evolve to some extent as they mature -- if they do not, they stagnate and die. But the scope of the shift from Perl 5 to Perl 6 seems far greater than that seen in any other programming language from one version to the next.

"There is nothing comparable that I know of in programming language evolution," Gurusamy Sarathy, who was the release manager for Perl 5.6, told NewsFactor.

Perl 6 project manager Nat Torkington confirmed the scope of the planned revision, telling NewsFactor, "There will be substantial changes in the move from Perl 5 to Perl 6. We've been hamstrung for a while by the need to maintain backward compatibility all the way back to Perl 1. There are some things we want to remove, because they seemed like good ideas when they were introduced but they're more trouble than [they're worth] now." (continued...)

1  |  2  |  3  |  Next Page >