The Thursday sessions are over, but before I head out to the parties, I’m attending the 14th State of the Onion address. This is the always well-attended update on the universe of Perl. I immediately noticed that Larry is surrounded by his wife and his son, the former dressed as an angel, the latter as a devil.

Larry claims that so rarely does he talk about Perl in the States of the Onion addresses that he has brought his conscience with him today to prod him in the right direction (the aforementioned angel and devil).

The current state of the onion is segmented into left, central, and right sections. It can be labeled, say, 5 and 6. They can also be labeled 0 and 1, for false and true. Larry then asked a series of boolean questions, asking the audience to weigh in on the veracity.

Do you think Perl 5 and Perl 6 are really the same language?

Do you think Perl 5 and Perl 6 are really different languages?

As the angel and the devil argued, Larry pointed out that an important skill for a language designer is to be able to stay on the fence long enough until he can determine which side the grass is greener on. Sometimes you discover that you’re sitting on the wrong fence and the voices in your head start to argue about which side has the greener grass.

When the voices in your head start arguing if the purple cow eats greener grass than the brown fence, it’s time to see a doctor. Or find a better drug dealer.

— Larry Wall

This is, of course, a metaphor for being a language designer. Sometimes you sit on the fence for language features, without ever knowing which direction is the better one.

Next up is a live demo of Perl 6; or, more specifically, of Rakudo Star, which is scheduled to be released next week. Some of the demos, without comment:

.say if 6 %% $_ for 1..^6

[+] gather { take $_ if 6 %% $_ for 1..^6 }

[+] grep { 6 %% $_ }, 1..^6

~[+] grep 6 %% *, 1..^6

-> $n { $n == [+] grep $n %% *,  ..^ $n }

-> $n { $n == [+] grep $n %% *,  ..^ $n }(6)

At this point, the examples scrolled off the screen due to a “whatever” example being run. That’s good news, though. It means Rakudo Star supports lazy lists and, as such, we finally have those infinite lists we’ve been promised:

0, 1, ... *

The whatever star can, in addition to being used as in an infinite series, can be used to curry a function:

(1, 1, *+* ... *)[^20]    # Fibbonacci

(0, !* ... *)[^20]        # 0 1 0 1 0 1 ...

In a recent video interview, Larry was asked, if he were hit by a bus, has he designated anyone to be his successor as the leader of the Perl 6 project? His response was that he trusts the Perl community to choose the right person.

Onions can make you cry, so can disruptive technologies or innovations. Almost everyone has labeled their technology as disruptive. As such, the phrase has lost most of its meaning.

A disruptive technology simultaneously does something worse and does something better than its competitors. In a time of the Unix philosophy of “do one thing and do it well,” Perl came along and attempted to do everything, but didn’t necessarily do any of it well. The Unix philosophy was broken by its own utilities. No one knew what a “thing” was, and no utility of the time did it well. By the time Perl 4 turned into Perl 5, it demonstrated that a tool that was itself an entire tool shed could run circles around shell scripts.

In California, we once had many, many colonies of ants. Now, most of California is populated by a single colony of Argentine ants. This is because the colonies have forgotten how to fight with each other. Perl 6 has benefited from multiple teams creating multiple implementations, in the end working together to create a better product, even if that product takes longer to complete.

If you don’t like Camelia, you can just fork off.

— Larry Wall

The takeaway, I think: It is up to all of us to determine what Perl 6 will be. What kind of disruptive technology will it be?