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Is it too late for Parrot VM?

by nikosv (Hermit)
on Jun 22, 2008 at 17:24 UTC ( #693390=perlnews: print w/ replies, xml ) Need Help??

An interesting article on Infoq. Is it too late for Parrot VM?

Comment on Is it too late for Parrot VM?
Re: Is it too late for Parrot VM?
by samtregar (Abbot) on Jun 22, 2008 at 18:07 UTC
    What about it did you find interesting? The number of languages supported by a VM seems like a completely uninteresting metric, and that's pretty much all he talked about. Does .NET or the JVM run Perl? If not, why would any of us care how many lame languages they can run, if they can't run the best?

    What I find most irritating about these articles is that they completely dismiss progress in Perl v5, as though once the v6 project started v5 was completely abandoned.



      I totally agree. In fact, judging from perl5.10 I'd say it almost doesn't matter of perl6 ever finishes. We keep getting fine and exciting features inspired or created in perl6. I think the only people that really obsess about perl6 are the people working on it, the people testing it, and outsiders who think we need perl6 to move forward.

      I also think parrot is exciting whether or not there are other virtual machines. I day dream of a day when I can compile very high level languages to a virtual machine of my choice. Maybe my perl6 runs on a jvm, a .net, and a parrot just fine...

      UPDATE: Yeah, I didn't intend any negative connotation... I fail to see how you could work on a project as big as perl6 without being a little obsessed.



        Who are incidentally the people who (should) now it best ;-) (OK, that's a stupid point - they know it best because they are exited about it ;-)

        That being said, I see that parrot constantly progresses, and that the other virtual machines (like jvm and dotnet) don't really have the same target audience.

        Yes, they are moving towards supporting dynamic languages, but it's not the same as if the VM were designed for it from ground up. Just compare the CPU time for taking a continuation. It's a bit like saying Cygwin is a competitor for full-blown Unix implementations.

        Actually the closer competitors are (IMHO) various VMs that were designed for executing lisp. Funny thing that nobody writes about those in the popular tech blogs.

      You don't need to agree with the article to find it interesting. It is also interesting to see what is the impression that outsiders get from the Parrot project. And it is also beneficial to have this mentioned here - because now you have a chance to correct them - by commenting the article at the source :)
        My point exactly.I too find it distressing and don't agree with it,
        but still find it interesting since it's good to be aware of other developments
        and possess a holistic view on a matter

        True, but I fail to see how this article is particularly interesting. It's 3 paragraphs of poorly spelt opinion that doesn't really offer anything new, or back up any of it's assertions with anything substantial.

        I welcome any reasonable, well thought out criticism of anything I work on, or any project I'm involved in, or even support. However, this is basically FUD. InfoQ has some interesting articles, but they seem to value quantity highly, and a lot of their posts are just padding.

        No one really knows if Parrot is too late, will succeed of fail, or whatever. It's irrelevant how quickly something is released if it offers significant advantages over whatever else is available. (That's not a guarantee of success, but success or failure does not rest on how early/late it was released at that point). On top of that, I don't think it's useful to consider the success of Parrot in isolation. There's a good chance Parrot will fail if Perl 6 isn't widely used. Would the JVM or the CLR be widely used if they didn't have at least one popular language to run on them?

        (Note: I'm defining success above as "widespread adoption". There might be other definitions, of course. Also note, I'm not involved in Parrot or Perl 6 development).

        Did you actually follow that perljvm link? I ask because there's absolutely nothing to see there. 0 files, no description, no whatever.

        Btw, those wo are looking for a scripting language that runs on a jvm should check out Groovy and maybe the web application framework Grails.

        holli, /regexed monk/
Re: Is it too late for Parrot VM?
by Anonymous Monk on Jun 23, 2008 at 06:40 UTC
    Interesting, that list doesn't show brainfuck, while parrot has brainfuck
        Thats what I said :) to clarify JVM and .NET do not have it
Re: Is it too late for Parrot VM?
by webfiend (Vicar) on Jun 26, 2008 at 00:43 UTC

    Not so interesting, actually. Somebody thinks Product B is cool, and suddenly thinks that Product A will fail unless it starts looking and tasting exactly like Product B. I'll have to file this post in the "Perl is dead" folder, right next to the "Apple is going out of business" and "Linux is doomed" folders that have been steadily filling up for years.

    Addendum: That paragraph was a little inarticulate, but I'm just bugged by the amount of well-intentioned whining that goes on in blog posts like that. Lord knows I've done plenty of it myself. We would love to see our guys win, but we won't take any steps to improve the situation. We don't want to do anything that might actually help when it feels so much better to sit on the sidelines, wring our hands nervously, and offer useless commentary. Do you think there aren't enough languages running on the Parrot VM? There's a way to fix that, you know. Study Parrot and write a language that runs on it. If you don't feel like doing that, then find something more interesting to talk about.

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