parrot-dev Digest, Vol 58, Issue 9
Jonathan "Duke" Leto
jonathan at leto.net
Tue Jun 25 18:46:28 UTC 2013
Howdy,
Great questions, Bart! Let's see if I can answer some of them...
> * Parrot __should__ have been the de facto VM for dynamic languages. It isn't.
We didn't take over the world, yet! Darn. But I am willing to keep
trying.
> * Dynamic language interpreters have proliferated (pypy, rubinius, etc)
We had a good idea before everybody else! But ideas are essentially
worthless. You must execute and act on an idea to give it value. We have
been acting, but everyone agrees we could be more efficient in our
chaotic swirling towards our goal.
> * There was a big, important project that absolutely depended on
> parrot. It doesn't anymore.
You are severely wrong on this point. Please don't spread FUD or
blatantly incorrect technical information without consulting your
sources. Parrot Virtual Machine is still the most complete (and fastest,
iirc) implementation of Rakudo Perl 6. That might change soon with
Rakudo on MoarVM and the JVM, but those implementations are still lagging
behing Rakudo-on-Parrot.
> * The developers of that big, important project have written something
> that can only be considered a replacement for parrot, even if it isn't
> done yet.
MoarVM is the result of many lessons learned in Rakudo, NQP, Parrot and
the Perl 6 spec. It is an exciting project that I see as a new cousin to
Parrot, not an enemy combatant. Rakudo devs have stated that they want
to support multiple VM backends, so MoarVM will be the one they have
total control over (good for various reasons) but Rakudo will also
target the JVM and Parrot, indefinitely.
> Now, you may interpret this it in any way you wish. But at least one
> is that parrot has lost a large part of its relevancy. Relevancy, by
> lack of (say) money, is what an open source project lives by. Why
> would new people join parrot over pypy, moarvm, rubinius, or any of
> the other projects?
There is a lot of negativity that I don't appreciate here, Bart. People
join a community to scratch an itch or help or learn or various other
reasons. I am the "Community Ambassador" for Parrot and I hope that
people find our community a friendly and knowledgeable one, which does
not have dogmatic views about The One True Best Language. For people
who want only Python, there is pypy. For those that can only drink
Ruby-flavored Koolaid, Rubinius. MoarVM is the new Rakudo-centric VM.
You want a VM that aims to support *all* dynamic languages? Welcome to
Parrot, my fellow traveler.
> Again, parrot is a useful project. But I don't know what the futue holds for it.
The future is what we are building right now.
Duke
--
Jonathan "Duke" Leto <jonathan at leto.net>
Leto Labs LLC http://letolabs.com
209.691.DUKE http://duke.leto.net
@dukeleto
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