The Perl 6 developers hang out on the #perl6 channel on irc.freenode.net. This screencast will show how to connect to the channel using a browser and how to get help on the channel.
web interface to Freenode. Pick some username and type in the name of the channel: #perl6. You'll also need to answer the CAPTCHA that appears on that page.
In the channel you can type rakudo: followed by some Perl 6 expression. An eval-bot will take your code, execute it and post the output to the channel. This way you can try Rakudo Perl 6 without even installing it, and it is a good way to discuss features and ask questions.
For example you can type:
rakudo: say 19+23
and it will print back:
<+camelia> rakudo-{parrot,moar} f12020: OUTPUT
The name of the eval-bot has changed since I recorded the video a few years ago. Today, instead of p6eval the eval-bot is called camelia. If you'd like to try Perl 6 on IRC without even bothering the people on the channel you can type:
/msg camelia rakudo: 19+23
this will open another tab in the web-based IRC client and camelia will answer you there.
You can click on the label of that tab and from that point on you can have a private conversation with camelia the eval-bot.
If you wonder why do you need to prefix your command with rakudo: then you should know tha there are several back-ends running on the server and you can ask each one of them separatey to evaluate your code. For example you can type in
std: 19 23
and then std the Standard Grammar of Perl 6 will check if your snippet is syntactically correct. It won't evaluate it, but it can tell you about the syntax.
Published on 2015-01-25