Perl and Python to begin joint development

Mike Callahan mcalla at home.com
Sun Apr 1 21:57:07 EDT 2001


This is most most elaborate April's Fools joke I have ever seen. However,
the thought of merging Python and Perl is more suited to the end of October
not the beginning of April!

Mike Callahan

"Jeremy Hylton" <jeremy at alum.mit.edu> wrote in message
news:mailman.986151723.14868.python-list at python.org...
> [FYI:  This press release was also sent to c.l.py.a.  Dan and I expect
> to have the release schedule PEP ready soon.  And, yes, that's Parrot
> Enhancement Proposal (PEP). --jeremy]
>
> 04/01/2001
> SEBASTOPOL, CA
>
> Perl and Python to begin joint development
>
> Larry Wall, the creator of Perl, and Guido van Rossum, creator of
> Python, today announced that their respective projects are about to
> begin a period of joint development.
>
> According to the language designers, the idea surfaced at last year's
> Open Source Convention - "We at the Perl Conference were aware of a need
> for a new direction for Perl and for its community, and that's why we
> announced the work on Perl 6," said an excited Wall. "At the same time,
> Guido was thinking very hard about Python 2.0 and where it was going,
> and we got together and started talking about helping each other out."
>
> Initially, the pair planned to have their development communities
> working together for mutual benefit. van Rossum cited some of the
> technical reasons for the collaboration: "Perl's highly powerful regular
> expression engine would be integrated into Python, and would benefit us
> greatly; in return, we've got a number of things right that Perl could
> gain from, such as signal handling and robust software engineering."
>
> However, as both designers talked about the changes their languages were
> going through, they came to the conclusion that they had much to share
> at the language level as well as the interpreter level. According to
> Larry Wall, "Perl's always been about taking the best features of all
> the other languages available; it's perfectly natural for us to
> integrate the best features of Python too."
>
> The specifications for the combined language, called Parrot, will be
> documented in the forthcoming book "Programming Parrot In A Nutshell",
> to be published by O'Reilly and Associates. In the meantime, the Python
> Software Foundation is said to be making arrangements to merge with Yet
> Another Society. YAS president Kevin Lenzo was delighted at the move:
> "It's a natural extension of what YAS was set up to facilitate -
> collaboration and communication between programming communities."
>
> Parrot development will begin with the merger of the Py3K development
> team with the Perl 6 internals working group; Jeremy Hylton and Dan
> Sugalski will be the joint development leads.
>
> Larry Wall and Guido van Rossum both accepted positions at the Vancouver,
> Canada development company ActiveState. A spokesman for ActiveState said
> that the company was obviously very pleased with the decision, but
> denied that ActiveState had influenced it in any way.
>





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