This week on Perl 6 (9/9 - 9/15, 2002)
by Piers Cawley
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Pages: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Who's Who in Perl 6
You lucky people, last week you got Dan, this week it's Damian. Next week, the World! Bwah hah hah ha! Ahem. Without further ado:
- Who are you?
- Damian Conway
- What do you do for Perl 6?
- I help Larry with the design of the language syntax and semantics.
- I write the Exegeses (which explicate Larry's Apocalyptic designs).
- I create Perl 5 modules to prototype and demonstrate Perl 6 features.
- I roam the worlds -- both real and virtual -- explaining Perl
6.
- Where are you coming from?
- Two years of electrical engineering degree, four years of computer science degree, six years of Ph.D research, eight years of designing programming languages, two decades of teaching programming, an abiding interest in human-computer interaction, a deep scepticism of formal/theoretical solutions to practical problems, an abiding belief that computers and languages were meant to serve humans not vice-versa, and the overriding axiom that simpler is better (or, at least, simpler).
- When do you think Perl 6 will be released?
- By Christmas.
- Why are you doing this?
- I'd been doing language design for the better part of a decade before I started using Perl. So when the opportunity arose to work on my favourite language and collaborate with such an extraordinarily talented team of people, how could I possibly resist?
- You have 17 syllables. Describe yourself.
-
Out of the torrent an excited voice describes the passing wonders. - Do you have anything to declare?
- You're kidding, right? How many hours do you have?
Acknowledgements etc.
You may have noticed that I'm a little late mailing out the summary this week (though if you read this at www.perl.com you're probably wondering what I'm on about). Things have been hectic, and I really can't type or think fast enough. Normal service will hopefully be resumed this week.
Thanks are due to Damian for making the time to answer the questionnaire, even if he did cheat on the 'five words' question. Thanks are also due to everyone who has taken the time to send me answers over the weeks, apologies for not thanking you immediately. As usual, if you're involved on either of the main Perl 6 development lists, please consider answering the questions and sending your answers to mailto:5Ws@bofh.org.uk. I'm running low on answers, and I'd really like to see responses from (among others) Leopold Toetsch, Steve Fink, Brent Dax, and Jeff Goff. I don't care if you've already answered Bryan Warnock's questions, it's a different summary now.
Thanks too to the crack team of proofreaders from the rhizomatic.net irc server who will hopefully have whipped my grammar into shape by the time I think 'I really should get my finger out and post this.'
As usual, if you think that this summary has value, please consider sending money to the Perl Foundation http://donate.perl-foundation.org and help to support the ongoing development of Perl. The O'Reilly Network will, as usual, be paying my publication fee for this article directly to the Perl Foundation. If you didn't like the summary, then write your own; different viewpoints are always welcome.
If you want to reward me directly, well, iBooks are always nice (but I'd be so embarrassed if I received one), but so is feedback. Let me know what you think.
