A Specification, Not an Implementation

• Perl 1 .. 5 had no specifications apart from their implementations

• Not so Perl 6:

  • Specification developed as community process led by Larry Wall

  • Multiple implementations

    • Rakudo: On Parrot virtual machine

    • Pugs: written in Haskell

  • No "one" or "official" implementation

  • Specification evolves in response to feedback from implementations