Perl 6 and Parrot Essentials, Second Edition
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Summary: Parrot ~ .NET ?!
Comment: Perl 5 is the current version of Perl out there in active use. But a cadre of key developers has been steadily tooling up a major upgrade, Perl 6. This book gives you a detailed preview that claims to be an accurate description of what it will be, when it is officially released. In part, of course, so that existing Perl users can plan for the future. But the book is also a call to arms. If you are enticed and intrigued by Perl 6, and would like to contribute to its development, then please do so! The authors show how to join the development team. An all-volunteer effort, mind you. They can't pay you anything.
Speaking of which, that brings up the second part of the book. As part of the Perl 6 effort, there is a related project, Parrot. It will be a language independent virtual machine that can convert Perl 6 source to a byte code binary. And also do likewise for Tcl, Python, Java and other languages.
Does this ring any bells? Sounds in the spirit of Microsoft's .NET. That was and is a massive task in design and implementation. No one outside Microsoft, and precious few inside, knows how much it is costing. What is impressive is that here in Parrot, we have a bunch of volunteers trying a similar effort, with no $budget to speak of. Can they do it? The authors strongly argue, "yes".