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As with all things Perl, the central command of the language design process is Larry Wall, the creator of the Perl language. Larry is supported by the rest of the design team: Damian Conway, Allison Randal, Dan Sugalski, Hugo van der Sanden, and chromatic. We speak in weekly teleconferences and also meet face-to-face a few times a year to hash out ideas for the design documents, or to work through roadblocks standing in the way of design or implementation. The group is diverse, including programmers-for-hire, Perl trainers, and linguists with a broad spectrum of interests and experiences. This diversity has proved quite valuable in the design process, as each member is able to see problems in the design or potential solutions that the other members missed.
The first step in designing the new language was the RFC (Request For Comments) process. This spurred an initial burst of community involvement. Anyone was free to submit an RFC on any subject, whether it was as small as adding an operator, or as big as reworking OO syntax. Most of the proposals were really quite conservative. The RFCs followed a standard format so they would be easier to read and easier to compare.
Each RFC was subject to peer review, carried out in an intense few weeks around October 2000. One thing the RFC process demonstrated was that the Perl community still wasn't quite ready to move beyond the infighting that had characterized Perl 5 Porters earlier that year.* Even though few RFCs have been accepted without modification, the process identified a large number of irritants in the language. These have served as signposts for later design efforts.
The Apocalypses* and Exegeses†are an important part of the design process. Larry started the Apocalypse series as a systematic way of answering the RFCs. Each Apocalypse corresponds to a chapter in his book Programming Perl, and addresses the features in the chapter that are likely to change.
However, the Apocalypses have become much more than a simple response to RFCs. Larry has a startling knack for looking at 12 solutions to a problem, pulling out the good bits from each one, and combining them into a solution that is 10 times better than any of the proposals alone. The Apocalypses are an excellent example of this "Larry Effect." He addresses each relevant RFC, and gives reasons why he accepted or rejected various pieces of it. But each Apocalypse also goes beyond a simple "yes "and "no" response to attack the roots of the problems identified in the RFCs.Damian Conway 's Exegeses are extensions of each Apocalypse. Each Exegesis is built around a practical code example that applies and explains the new ideas.
The next body of design work is the Perl 6 Language mailing list (perl6-language@perl.org), often fondly referred to as "p6l." Luke Palmer has been deputized as unofficial referee of the list. He answers questions that don't require the direct involvement of the design team or that have been answered before. He also keeps an eye out for good suggestions to make sure the design team doesn't miss them in the sea of messages. The list has approximately 40 regular contributors in any given month, as well as a large number of occasional posters and lurkers. Some people have participated since the very beginning; others appear for a few months and move on.
Even though the individuals change, the general tone of p6l is the same. It's an open forum for any ideas on the user-visible parts of Perl 6. In the typical pattern, one person posts an idea and 5 to 10 people respond with criticisms or suggestions. The list periodically travels down a speculative thread like a runaway train, but these eventually run out of steam. Then Larry picks out the golden bits and gently tells the rest that no, he never intended Perl 6 to have hyper-vulcan mechanoid scooby-dooby-doos. Even when Larry doesn't post, he follows the list and the traffic serves as a valuable catalyst for his thoughts.
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Created: March 27, 2003
Revised: August 23, 2003
URL: http://webreference.com/programming/perl/essentials/chap1/1
