in reply to NO PERL 6
One worry i must say that i have about Perl6 is speed. I know there is alot of talk about how we are not to the point where speed matters yet, and we should be concerned with stability, etc ... but i think we are in danger of reproducing the errors done with Tcl. I am not against Perl6, but there was a point in Tcl development where they decided it would be a good idea to make everything an object, much like alot of the Perl6 ideas ... what this did was make me the winner of the speed arguments against Tcl coders... oh, and make Tcl more useful... but, somehow that gets lost now.
I have been really suprised by some of the changes with Perl6, and how much it resembles Java. I mean, if i wanted to write Java, or any OO-Dependant language, i would. I do write OO-Perl, but i like the option not to. I fear that we are building Yet Another Object Oriented Language.
I understand that many of the changes will make the language easier for new people to learn. But, while it is really nice to woo people away from other languages, and it may make people feel good to develop a language this easy to use, i thought that VB tought us that making coding easier, tends to make code worse. Well, i guess thats the end of my feelings.
I look forward to Perl6, but i really wish they would have just called the language something else, and let it co-exist with Perl as it is ... thus making the rather large existing community happy, while creating this new, easy-to-learn language. I am sure that a reply (and a downvote) will say that "Perl5 will still be around", but, hey, when is the last time your CTO said "lets use the last version of the language, becuase my technical experiance shows it to be better for what we are doing" ? -- They didn't ... they normally choose the newest technology, even when it is not best suited to what you are doing *cough* java *cough*
Just my €0.02from the frivolous to the serious