Perl 6 Essentials

Chapter 1. Project Overview

Conceptual integrity in turn dictates that the design must proceed from one mind, or from a very small number of agreeing resonant minds.

—Frederick Brooks Jr., The Mythical Man Month

Perl 6 is the next major version of Perl. It’s a complete rewrite of the interpreter, and a significant update of the language itself. The goal of Perl 6 is to add support for much-needed new features, and still be cleaner, faster, and easier to use.

The Perl 6 project is vast and complex, but it isn’t complicated. The project runs on a simple structure with very little management overhead. That’s really the only way it could run. The project doesn’t have huge cash or time resources. Its only resource is the people who believe in the project enough to spend their off-hours—their “relaxation” time—working to see it completed. This chapter is as much about people as it is about Perl.

The Birth of Perl 6

Back on July 18, 2000, the second day of the fourth Perl Conference (TPC 4), a small band of Perl geeks gathered to prepare for a meeting of the Perl 5 Porters later that day. The topic at hand was the current state of the Perl community. Four months had passed since the 5.6.0 release of Perl, and although it introduced some important features, none were revolutionary.

There had been very little forward movement in the previous year. It was generally acknowledged that the Perl 5 codebase had grown difficult to maintain. At the same time, infighting on the perl5-porters list had ...