[Neworleans-pm] [pmichaud at pobox.com: Perl 6 Scripting Games]

[B. Estrade]

I found this very cool. Merry Christmas, everyone.

Cheers,
Brett

----- Forwarded message from "Patrick R. Michaud" <pmichaud at pobox.com> -----

Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2008 00:55:02 -0600
From: "Patrick R. Michaud" <pmichaud at pobox.com>
To: perl6-users at perl.org
Subject: Perl 6 Scripting Games

Are you interested in playing with Perl 6 and Rakudo Perl but can't 
figure out what to do? Here's an idea that came up during Jon Allen's 
talk "The Camel and the Snake" [1] at YAPC::EU in Copenhagen.

For the past few years Microsoft has sponsored an annual 
Scripting Games [2] competition, where they publish problems of 
varying difficulty levels to be solved using Perl 5, VBScript, 
Python, or other languages. I think it might be very interesting 
and useful to see people develop and publish Perl 6 solutions 
to those problems.

So, here's my idea: If you're interested in learning more about 
Perl 6, select one or more problems from the Scripting Games 
website, develop solution(s) for them in Perl 6, and then publish 
your solutions somewhere along with a description of what you 
like, don't like, learned, didn't learn, etc. about Perl 6 and 
Rakudo Perl.

One of the things we've observed from our experience with the 
November Wiki [3] and other similar projects is that having "running 
code examples" and "real problems" is one of the best drivers for 
compiler and language development. I'm thinking that having people 
craft solutions to the scripting problems might do more of the 
same for Rakudo, while also sparking discussion and reflection on 
Perl 6 itself.  

So, where to start? Start by obtaining and building a copy of 
Rakudo Perl [4], write and test your solutions to one or more problems, 
and post the results and your experiences somewhere for others 
to see. You can post to use.perl.org, your private blog, the 
perl6-users mailing list, or anywhere else you find convenient. 
The point isn't to develop a centralized repository of solutions 
(although we can do that), but rather to use the problems as a 
way to spread discussion, feedback, and experience with Perl 6.

I should also make it plain that people are very likely to run 
into some of Rakudo Perl's "rough edges" -- places where we don't 
yet implement key features or where they don't work exactly as 
they're supposed to. But to the designers and implementors that's 
part of the point -- we need to know where those rough edges are. 
Overall, I'm hoping that with the recent improvements to Rakudo 
Perl [5] there won't be so many rough edges as to make the effort more 
disappointing than enjoyable. And there are lots of people eager 
to answer questions and help out on the perl6-users mailing list, 
IRC #perl6 (irc.freenode.net), and other common Perl forums. 
It's all about learning and improving what we have with Perl 6.

I look forward to seeing your questions and answers.

Happy holidays,

Pm 

1. The Camel and the Snake, http://www.yapceurope2008.org/ye2008/talk/1365
2. The Scripting Games, http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/funzone/games/default.mspx
3. November Wiki, http://github.com/viklund/november/tree/master
4. Rakudo Perl README, http://svn.perl.org/parrot/trunk/languages/perl6/README
5. Rakudo Perl Twitter feed, http://twitter.com/rakudoperl


----- End forwarded message -----

-- 
B. Estrade
Louisiana Optical Network Initiative
+1.225.578.1920 aim: bz743
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