perlmeditation
frankus
Perl6 has left me cold. In fact at first I thought someone had been taken in by this <a href="http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2001/04/01/parrot.htm">old chestnut</a>.<br>The comparisons are scary, perhaps they were meant to be.<p>
Like most of Perl programmers I know, I'm a pragmatist.
<br>A conceptual model is not going to help me finish todays work.
<br>I guess I'm more lazy than most, the length of the Apocalypses, left me cold.
<br>So I've sat in ignorance and worried about the future of Perl for some time.
<br>I've increased the amount of Python, Java and Ruby I can put on my CV,<br>
for a time when Perl is marginalised as I percieve Sed and Awk to be now.<P>
So like most at Conway Hall last night, there to listen to Damian Conway describe Perl6,
I was sceptical.<br>
As Damian predicted, one by one the lights would flick on in people's eyes
as a new concept appealed to them.
<br>The number of excited whispers in the audience increased as concepts hit home and people grasped the implications and applications.<br>
<p>
The pervading theme of the talk, that lasted three and a half hours was this: less syntactic sugar, more syntactic vitamins.
<br>There are more features to make you say "this is really cool", despite the fact that the way they're called may be slightly more verbose.<p>
The power has increased, so keywords may be longer but the program needs fewer for the same functionality.
<br>Bad news is there are less sigils to freak out Java coders, but this means we can assimilate them.<p>
A lot of the work is removing niggles and adding stuff that people have wanted in Perl, indented heredocs, case statements, exceptions.
<br>Then add to list of enhancements that are entirely new to any language:<br>
dedicated applications of functions by making a parameter constant,
<br>some un-earthly use of lists as parameters
<br>and it's hard to dislike the plans for Perl6.<p>
Not all the news was good, or rather immediately palatable.<br>
But it's worth remembering that Perl has come a long way from munging text.
It's been stretched out to cover a wide range.<br>
It's prudent to let it evolve to cope with it's new demands as gracefully as it does at it's initial application.<br>
The talk has renewed my faith in Perl and made me consider reading the Apocalypse.
<p>Thanks to [TheDamian|Damian], London.pm and the Perl Foundation for an excellent thought provoking evening.<p>
<sub>The title refers to Damian's conclusion to each glimpse into the toy-store that will be Perl6.</sub>
<p>--<br></br>
<i>Brother <A HREF="/index.pl?node=Frankus&lastnode_id=1072">Frankus</A>.</i>
<p align="center">¤</p>