Perl 6

I've been reading through some of th Apocalypse design documents about the upcoming Perl 6 release, and while I'm not very far through them yet, I'm beginning to get excited about the release.

Perl always has had a "thrown together" quality to it. It's as if there started a wonder core language to which new patches and extensions were continually added, occasionally in a haphazard way. If you look closely enough at the syntax, you can almost see the dividing lines as to what "featured" were added at different times. Perl 6 does a lot to unify this mess. I may not agree with each individual design decision, but the overall direction is a good one to travel.

I'm excited about Parrot too, and if the Python, PHP, and Ruby people are willing to jump onto it, then it will become a great thing. However, if Parrot never is adopted beyond the Perl community, and is weighted down by the additional bloated support of all the other languages that are never used, then it's a disaster waiting to happen.

Per 6, I think, represents the maturation of the perl community, and I'm excited to see it when it finally comes out.