Comment by librasteve

20 hours ago

I would like to see Raku (https://raku.org) at least mentioned in the list of languages to be aware of. Why?

  - Raku has built in Grammars so it is a great place to do early iteration of your parser
  - Raku is objects and type classes all the way down (as explained here https://gist.github.com/raiph/849a4a9d8875542fb86df2b2eda89296 )
  - RakuAST development is well advanced (use v6.e.PREVIEW) with the Slangify module to accelerate development of sub languages (Slangs)

Here is a Raku implementation of Brainfuck to whet the appetite https://github.com/alabamenhu/PolyglotBrainfuck/blob/main/li...

For those unaware, Raku is the evolution of Perl 6, basically. It's honestly a beautiful and seductive language. At the same time it terrifies me.

  • The main idea of renaming from Perl6 to Raku was to allow this beautiful and seductive new language to escape the black hole gravity well formed by the collapse of the Perl star. Seems like Raku is stuck inside the Perl event horizon for ever, with no hope of reputational escape.

    • I think it was based on the misconception that the mainstream turned away from Perl because of a handful of warts and mistakes, not because Perl's unconstrained flexibility made it impractical, and that Perl "done right" could recapture the excitement and mainstream attention that Perl once enjoyed. I think they should have accepted that the existing community was already the largest subset of programmers that could embrace Perl's trade-offs, with or without the historical warts.

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    • Great analogy, and similar to how I saw things play out.

      IIRC Perl 6 wanted to expand or morph into something better, spent a ton of time on it, and the community in general rejected it hard.

      So now we have this dangling language that's shunned by its own community, regardless of its merits. Weird place to be in.

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