The non-butterfly effect - a universe where Camelia didn't flap her wings

60 minutes

Any

English 

This talk presents an alternative history of Perl, in a universe where no-one threw any mugs.

I can't change history. My algorithms (and estimates) never run in constant time, so even if parallel universes exist, we still can't reach them.

But what if a parallel universe exists, where no-one threw any mugs, and the Perl 6 project we know had never started? This talk explores an alternative fictional history, where a only a couple of key events turned out differently, and ponders how things evolved, and whether history converges.

In this talk we'll learn about many things in Perl's history, and contrast Perl's current situation with analogous dynamic languages and what could have been. Discover the wonderful BUFFIE and Cube projects (and how they went wrong), and how they map to the tricky problems in our universe.

Based on more facts™ than you might first realise - many things presented as fiction are actually pretty much true, with only the names changed to protect the innocent^Wguilty.

Researching this, I got my hands dirty using CVS and Sourceforge, so that you don't have to. Come and discover the fun things that I learned.