a book I want

[Allison Randal]

Wow, that message is 6 months old. I feel a bit like someone's been
reading through my high-school year-book. ;)

Ah, well, I guess it's a good opportunity for an update.

On Sat, Jun 29, 2002 at 08:13:25AM -0700, Curtis Poe wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Allison Randal" <al at shadowed.net>
> To: <pdx-pm-list at pm.org>
> Sent: Monday, January 07, 2002 8:25 AM
> Subject: a book I want
>
> I understand that Damian Conway has something "planned", but I don't
> know the details yet.

What he has planned at the moment is a published version of the
Apocalypses and Exegeses (and maybe the Synopses now). Of course,
they'll all have to be revised to fit with later changes. But, we made
good progress on that in the Perl 6 meetings in St. Louis before YAPC.

Do I still think we need another book? Hmmmm... I don't know. There may
be a niche for one. I'll reserve judgement until I see the drafts for
the revised Camel and Llama. :) 

> However, since the only guarantee about Perl 6 is that everything is
> in flux, I don't think there is any reasonable way such a thing could
> be constructed at this time. Can you imagine the wholesale revisions
> that would be necessary if, for some reason, they decided to change
> the concatenation operator again (what is this time, by the way?).

It's settled on a steady C<_>. You'd be surprised how much is steady
now.

> For that reason, I don't think one will be coming out any time within the
> next year. Of course, since you mentioned that "the book should be released
> a few months before the full production version of Perl 6", then I suspect
> we'll wait at least two years for the book :(

I agree, a book wouldn't be appropriate yet. What is appropriate is
training in a more flexible format. It's no good to just wait until Perl
6 is released and then learn it. I mean, you could, but you'll be way
behind the curve. More and more "Perl 6" features are being released in
Perl 5. And even more you can play with in the Perl6::... modules.

The current projections are to have a usable interpreter in 12-18
months. And looking at the progress they've made on Parrot, I wouldn't
be at all surprised if it happened.

Allison
TIMTOWTDI