Re: [off topic] an amusing side note
The image is wonderful. Wrong, but funny. I just got finished reading all of the recently posted and updated synopses and found them remarkably coherent. I can see it as nothing but getting rid of all of the old fluff in the language and replacing it with well thought out, concrete and purposeful syntax. I am excited to be able to begin using the language (I can wait). Perl 5 is good enough for now - but is nice to know that Perl 6 is coming. It will be nice to see changes in: References - no more chapter on referencing and dereferencing, or taking the ref of a ref of a ref. Aliases and binding are welcome additions. Regular expressions - no more (ok -- less -- ok there will still be a lot of) cryptic regexes. Reusable regexes with expressive syntax will be nice. Prototyping - no more need to use a limited set of limiting rules. Full blown signatures will be welcome. Special variables - no more cryptic variables (well - ok - four or five as opposed to 30). All variables are accessible in sane locations. Yes - the book will have more to cover. It will also have less in some parts. I look forward to sections on junctions, properties, traits, module creation, exceptions, events, and so on. Seems kind of funny to me that somebody who was offered a great deal of improvements turned them down merely because they were having trouble reading the instructions (well that isn't fair, the design docs aren't instructions - the synopses are barely a first pass). It is sort of like turning down a new car because you disagree with the way the design of new fuel system was presented and because there are too many customizations. Paul PS - The only place my eyes glaze over are when I hit piddles and puddles - but somehow I'm not too worried about it. On Wednesday 24 November 2004 04:30 pm, Felix Gallo wrote: On Wed, Nov 24, 2004 at 04:25:14PM -0500, John Siracusa wrote: On 11/24/04 3:42 PM, Felix Gallo wrote: Well, it's the first time *I've* seen it. http://otierney.net/images/perl6.gif I find it difficult to disagree, at the perl6 language level. I don't :) Judging by the Perl 6 RFCs, I think that book cover would be accurate if the community really did design Perl 6 in the absence of Larry. Fortunately, that's not the case. I think Perl 6 is a lot cleaner than Perl 5 in addition to being much more powerful. This would doubtless be a very long discussion :), so I will stop my contribution to the thread with the following notes: 1. I ran the Obfuscated Perl contest for many years, and even I draw the line at purposefully obfuscated language design documentation _release methods_. Sly obfuscated cuteness has gone from 'rife' to 'pathologically endemic', in both design and presentation. IMHO. 2. perl 6 is a lot cleaner than perl 5. It's also much, much larger than an already very large language. I've been programming and evangelizing Perl in organizations small and gigantic since 4.03x, and my eyes just glaze over at all the unnecessarily surfaced complexity bound to make reading other people's programs finally, at last, literally impossible: http://www.ozonehouse.com/mark/blog/code/PeriodicTable.html I'm not going to use perl 6. F.
[off topic] an amusing side note
Well, it's the first time *I've* seen it. http://otierney.net/images/perl6.gif I find it difficult to disagree, at the perl6 language level. Here's to hoping something sensible emerges from Parrot, at least. :) F.
Re: [off topic] an amusing side note
On Wed, Nov 24, 2004 at 03:42:48PM -0500, Felix Gallo wrote: Well, it's the first time *I've* seen it. http://otierney.net/images/perl6.gif I find it difficult to disagree, at the perl6 language level. Here's to hoping something sensible emerges from Parrot, at least. :) The original is here: http://bleaklow.com/blog/archive/18.html I doubt that Alan objects to anyone saving his bandwidth. Nicholas Clark
Re: [off topic] an amusing side note
On 11/24/04 3:42 PM, Felix Gallo wrote: Well, it's the first time *I've* seen it. http://otierney.net/images/perl6.gif I find it difficult to disagree, at the perl6 language level. I don't :) Judging by the Perl 6 RFCs, I think that book cover would be accurate if the community really did design Perl 6 in the absence of Larry. Fortunately, that's not the case. I think Perl 6 is a lot cleaner than Perl 5 in addition to being much more powerful. -John
Re: [off topic] an amusing side note
On Wed, Nov 24, 2004 at 04:25:14PM -0500, John Siracusa wrote: On 11/24/04 3:42 PM, Felix Gallo wrote: Well, it's the first time *I've* seen it. http://otierney.net/images/perl6.gif I find it difficult to disagree, at the perl6 language level. I don't :) Judging by the Perl 6 RFCs, I think that book cover would be accurate if the community really did design Perl 6 in the absence of Larry. Fortunately, that's not the case. I think Perl 6 is a lot cleaner than Perl 5 in addition to being much more powerful. This would doubtless be a very long discussion :), so I will stop my contribution to the thread with the following notes: 1. I ran the Obfuscated Perl contest for many years, and even I draw the line at purposefully obfuscated language design documentation _release methods_. Sly obfuscated cuteness has gone from 'rife' to 'pathologically endemic', in both design and presentation. IMHO. 2. perl 6 is a lot cleaner than perl 5. It's also much, much larger than an already very large language. I've been programming and evangelizing Perl in organizations small and gigantic since 4.03x, and my eyes just glaze over at all the unnecessarily surfaced complexity bound to make reading other people's programs finally, at last, literally impossible: http://www.ozonehouse.com/mark/blog/code/PeriodicTable.html I'm not going to use perl 6. F.
Re: [off topic] an amusing side note
On Wed, Nov 24, 2004 at 06:30:29PM -0500, Felix Gallo wrote: 2. perl 6 is a lot cleaner than perl 5. It's also much, much larger than an already very large language. I've been programming and evangelizing Perl in organizations small and gigantic since 4.03x, and my eyes just glaze over at all the unnecessarily surfaced complexity bound to make reading other people's programs finally, at last, literally impossible: http://www.ozonehouse.com/mark/blog/code/PeriodicTable.html I'm not going to use perl 6. I doubt anyone will. We'll all be using subsets. Of course the subset that I use will probably be different from the subset used by the authors of the modules I'll be using. That's a potential headache but not a huge problem. I predict a burst of wild creativity from authors enjoying the exploration of all the wonderful tools in the perl6 toolbox. Then, after a year or three of fun, sawn off limbs, and bloodied fingers (and after a few good books get published) most of us will converge towards a common subset of accepted good practice. But we'll know that our new toolbox of choice is far deeper than our old one and will cope with a far wider range of projects. Tim.
Re: [off topic] an amusing side note
On 11/24/04 7:27 PM, Tim Bunce wrote: I predict a burst of wild creativity from authors enjoying the exploration of all the wonderful tools in the perl6 toolbox. Then, after a year or three of fun, sawn off limbs, and bloodied fingers (and after a few good books get published) most of us will converge towards a common subset of accepted good practice. ...much like what happened with Perl 5...although the last phase has been hampered somewhat but the utility of some of those early, crazy efforts :) -John
Re: [off topic] an amusing side note
On Wed, Nov 24, 2004 at 06:30:29PM -0500, Felix Gallo wrote: 2. perl 6 is a lot cleaner than perl 5. It's also much, much larger than an already very large language. I've been programming and evangelizing Perl in organizations small and gigantic since 4.03x, and my eyes just glaze over at all the unnecessarily surfaced complexity bound to make reading other people's programs finally, at last, literally impossible: http://www.ozonehouse.com/mark/blog/code/PeriodicTable.html I'm not going to use perl 6. Now, think about what a similar table would look like for Perl 5. How different would it be? For extra credit, make one. As an exercise, go through those operators and remove all that are already in Perl 5 (such as cmp), or have an equivalent in Perl 5 (such as ?), or are a simple expansion of an operator (such as ?=). Another exercise, eliminate operators for operations you don't already do much of in Perl 5 (such as bitwise operations). For extra credit, note which operators are just altered versions of Perl 5 operators (such as +). For extra credit, make another list from that of those new operators which replace existing common idioms in Perl 5 (such as hyperoperators) and make them easier. -- Michael G Schwern[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.pobox.com/~schwern/ The method employed I would gladly explain, While I have it so clear in my head, If I had but the time and you had but the brain-- But much yet remains to be said. -- Hunting of the Snark, Lewis Carroll
