the-owlery

Perl 6 has slides, IRC, a skim-through (learnxinyminutes), reference docs, examples, but alas no solid tutorial. This, IMO, will be a major problem if it persists until Christmas.

Perl 6 needs a good tutorial.

The page looks fine. I think the "Fun" and "Whatever" pages could be merged. The front page should probably explain more why someone would want to use the language.

That said though, none of this is going to matter unless there's a good tutorial. Nothing currently available is cutting it as a tutorial.

This is on Debian Testing:

    $ perl6 -e '$*DISTRO.say'
    debian (3.16.0.4.amd.64)

Thanks. Tried installing but got errors.

    ==> Fetching p6doc
    ==> Building p6doc
    ==> Testing p6doc

    # Failed test 'empty blocks argument gives undefined content'
    # at t/pod-convenience.t line 31
        # Looks like you failed 1 test of 7

    # Failed test 'pod-with-title'
    # at t/pod-convenience.t line 23
    t/pod-convenience.t .. 
    Failed 2/10 subtests 
    t/pod-htmlify.t ...... ok
    Method 'super' not found for invocant of class 'Array'
      in sub visit at /home/me/.panda-work/1441386381_4/lib/Perl6/TypeGraph.pm:89
      in sub visit at /home/me/.panda-work/1441386381_4/lib/Perl6/TypeGraph.pm:89
      in method topo-sort at /home/me/.panda-work/1441386381_4/lib/Perl6/TypeGraph.pm:92
      in method parse-from-file at /home/me/.panda-work/1441386381_4/lib/Perl6/TypeGraph.pm:82
      in method new-from-file at /home/me/.panda-work/1441386381_4/lib/Perl6/TypeGraph.pm:30
      in block <unit> at t/typegraph.t:8

    t/typegraph.t ........ 
    Dubious, test returned 255 (wstat 65280, 0xff00)
    Failed 8/8 subtests

    $ perl6 -v
    This is perl6 version 2015.07.1-728-g9c5cb50 built on
    MoarVM version 2015.07-108-g7e9f29e

Thanks, kbenson; missed that. Works now!

Ok. Command-line history/editing works now. I wiped out ~/.rakudobrew and started over:

    rakudobrew build moar
    rakudobrew build-panda
    panda install Linenoise

I installed via rakudobrew (`rakudobrew build glr`), but have no `panda` in my ~/.rakudobrew/bin directory.

It's great that this is available (haven't worked through it yet).

Two major show-stoppers for me right now though:

* In the Perl 6 repl, I can't use my up/down arrows, or ^p/^n to get at previous lines I typed, nor ^a/^e and alt-B/alt-F to navigate on the line.

* In the repl, I can't do `doc(some-func)` to get at docstrings.

My understanding is that type inferencing allows you to omit specifying types in many places (the compiler uses heuristics to figure out the types in those places out at compile-time), but that you still need to specify types when necessary. (Please correct me if I'm wrong.)

I think Rust does this, but looking at Rust code, there's still types specified all over the place, and it looks much more cluttered to me than dynamically typed languages I've used.

> * hearing how difficult it is to learn, and

I thought it was pretty straight forward coming from Erlang.

The biggest thing for me was practice thinking in recursion.

I use Clojure, generally like functional programming, and am fine using recursion.

Haskell has such a clean looking syntax.

I have gotten fond of Clojure's Lisp-like syntax.

Oh, I think you're trying to say the threshold of being good with haskell is much higher? Cause I see that argument quite and bit.

Not sure -- haven't spent any time with Haskell. Never tried Erlang either. Do you think it generally takes longer to become productive with Haskell than with other functional programming languages?

I've avoided Haskell, primarily because:

* hearing how difficult it is to learn, and

* recalling C++ & Java, not crazy about the idea of going back to having to specify types for everything.

But Haskell is enticing to me:

* bindings to C-libraries in general (been meaning to try GTK, and wanted to use SQLite for a small project)

* apps start-up quickly

* compiled (good performance)

What's the Haskell community like?

Is Haskell a practical language/ecosystem, or more academic-focused?