Since I appear to have contributed to the problem ... :-) On Fri, Mar 14, 2003 at 06:00:59PM -0500, Tolkin, Steve wrote: > I think I am in the same camp as Chris Nandor and John Tobey. > They, and I, have just given up on Perl 6.
I would say don't give up. Unless you need it within the next couple years, in which case, ok, give up. But if you're thinking long term, have some faith in Larry, Damian, and the other guys who are smart, creative, and apparently working together really well together (unusual in Perl's history!). Yes, Perl 6 will be enormous. But the new ideas have come from (at least) dozens of minds and hundreds of man-years' experience with Perl; they have been scrutinized and discussed in public; they are being carefully weighed and assimilated by a proven language designer; and they will be implemented by top-notch hackers like Dan. I'm not guaranteeing that Perl 6 won't be a second-system flop, but I give it good odds. Don't forget, each Apocalypse seems less daunting and more appealing after the accompanying Exigesis, so at least wait for Damian to chime in and balance things out! > I think it is telling that most of the responses to my email > are a technical discussion, e.g. how to make Perl more > like Scheme. But Scheme, while elegant, is still > a "boutique" langue whereas Perl is widely used. Perl has picked up lots of ideas from lots of languages. Where do you think closures came from in the first place? Probably also the general list-orientation. And the fact that this thread has zoned in on Scheme doesn't mean that Larry is focused in this direction. I haven't seen any evidence of that at all. He's incorporating a staggering number of new concepts, but he seems to be getting them from all corners of the universe. > As we know, when Larry designed Perl he took the best parts > of awk, VC, sh, etc., plus added a few excellent new ideas, > and produced a language that was a mixture -- but a mix > based on features that had been proven to be good. > > In contrast Perl 6 is a mixture of a variety of theoretically > desireable features, e.g. multimethods, functional programming, > logic programming, aspect oriented programming, > design by contract, etc. that have not been proven in > widely used languages. I would say that (most of) these ideas are more widely used and proven--in some circle--than you give them credit for. Also, I wasn't around for the early evolution of Perl either, but bet some of Perl's features were similarly "academic" to the Perl community when they were introduced. Frankly, I commend Larry for his effort to pull them into a popular, approachable language. Maybe I have an ax to grind (functional programming not proven!?), so don't listen to me; but Larry doesn't--that's one of his most remarkable features--and I think he may still have a few gems to give us. Andrew _______________________________________________ Boston-pm mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
