Karl Glazebrook writes:
> Well said!
>
> My take: I like perl, I don't mind it the way it is. But I'd be happier if
> it was a lot more like python! (indentation aside)
This begs the question of why you're not using python. If it's just
indentation, that's silly. Surely there are patches to the Python
parser to permit curlies. If there aren't, surely it's on the table
for python3000.
> I guess the question arises - how radical is perl6 allowed to be?
Only Larry can say how different from perl5 perl6 will be, and he can
only say that after he's seen how radical it *might* be. My personal
suspicion is that it won't be so different from perl5 that it feels
like a different language.
What makes Perl feel like Perl is, of course, subjective, but to me
the punctuation is a lot of it. We're trying to improve Perl, not
replace it. At some point you run into the grandfather's axe syndrome
("I have my grandfather's axe. My father replaced the blade, and I
replaced the shaft").
Larry will probably also have to consider ease of adoption: if current
Perl programmers can't migrate a lot of what they know, they'll be
starting from scratch. That's hardly embodying Laziness. Perl's got
a long history of stealing from other languages. Are you sure you
aren't trying to create another language and steal from Perl? Because
if you are, Python already did that :-)
It occurrs to me that for some kinds of RFCs, it's very important to
put the WHY into your RFCs, not just the how. Your suggested
implementation might be rejected, but Larry might be able to find
another way to permit what you want.
Nat
