You know, every time I see all the newfangled stuff in Perl 6 that looks so unfamiliar, I get worried. Perl 5 is large; much larger than most people expect. But the core canon is relatively small (which is how it affords said illusion to aforementioned people).
Then I see things like the slides to Autrjus’ Apocalypse Now – Perl 6 is here today talk and they make me think the core canon in Perl 6 is very large. I worry that we have a C → C++ situation. Perl 6 is not a second system, but it makes me ever so slightly queasy to look at all the stuff, and I wonder if maybe Perl was so successful because it managed to stave off the second system effect until the fifth system (not counting Perl 1, of course)…
And then I get to the slide aptly numbered “42”, and all rational thought ceases as I start to drool while I click [Next]. I want Perl 6 grammars and rules; I wan them now; I want to play with them so bad I can taste it.
Sigh.
I’ll just gnash my teeth in anxiety and hope that everything turns out fine. I suppose the feeling will wane once I get around to playing with Pugs – or it will wax. Argh! Make it stop…
Re:Ordinary Perl
Aristotle on 2005-06-16T17:57:06
Agreed – though I’m not even talking about particularly ground breaking stuff. I’m talking about things that will be bread and butter, like all the punctuation related to parameter lists, and the traits built into the core language, and the multi-sub/method thing, and calling methods on self or super, etc etc etc. Even these mundande and everyday things seem laden with a lot of syntax in Perl 6.
Indeed, a few simple but non-trivial examples showing how to use these would be helpful.
Hmm… maybe I should read the source of few of the modules that have been ported to Perl 6…
Re:Perl6 Now
jplindstrom on 2005-06-16T17:37:05
Unfortunately Perl6::Classes sounds a little too fragile.
Actually I'm more inclined to play around with Perl6 proper a bit and see how far that takes me. The Python challenge sounds like a good set of problems.Re:Perl6 Now
Aristotle on 2005-06-16T17:48:50
Yes. Including, strangely enough, Pugs. And my last paragraph says “once I get around to playing with Pugs.”
Geesh, I think we'll just have to le-learn it piece by piece, starting with the familiar stuff and moving on to the unfamiliar as the need arises. Some of the features, like inheritance of grammars, continuations and coroutines won't be used by 99% of the users 99% of the time, but still it's good to have them there, just in case.
And I also can't be more excited about the new features: grammars, macros, compilation to Parrot (that should boost performance and allow better stand-alone abilities).
Re:fears shared
Aristotle on 2005-06-17T10:27:39
I challenge the notion that these features will be used so little. I think we will be using them a whole lot, much more than we think we will. Grammar inheritance f.ex is something I probably would have used lots and lots in the past, had I had something like it.
That is one reason I am wary, in fact. I do not for a second believe that all these exotic-looking features will remain as optional as they’re claimed to be – no more so than we nowadays consider all the things which Perl 5 introduced over Perl 4.
The thing is, something easy to use will get used. (And by easy to use I mean easy on the level of “has concise syntax in the language” vs “requires a module (which is internally complex) with a non-trivial API.”) Programming on the level of a module author will require a strong grasp on all of the concepts in Perl 6 – if for no other reason than to make your code play nice with prior art.
Re:fears shared
spur on 2005-06-17T10:38:37
You're certainly not in the 99% percentile of users I was referring to:-)
