Re: OO in Perl 6

[revdiablo]

I agree that the dot syntax is a bit easier to type, and I think overall the syntactic change is worth the (very small, for me anyway) pain it takes to re-learn. A more significant change, in my mind, is how most object code will actually be written. It won't take nearly as much code to accomplish the same goals. Consider an example:

class Point {
  has $.x;
  has $.y;
  method str {
    return $.x ~ "x" ~ $.y;
  }
}

my $point = Point.new(x => 2, y => 3);
say $point.str;

Compared to the equivalent Perl 5:

{
  package Point;
  sub new {
    my $name = shift;
    my %attr = @_;
    return bless { %attr }, $name;
  }
  sub x {
    my $self = shift;
    return $self->{x};
  }
  sub y {
    my $self = shift;
    return $self->{y};
  }
  sub str {
    my $self = shift;
    return $self->x . "x" . $self->y;
  }
}

my $point = Point->new(x => 2, y => 3);
print $point->str, "\n";

I think you'll agree that the Perl 6 version makes it a lot easier to get on to the heart of the matter. I really like it.

(Of course, we can get most of the same conciseness in Perl 5 with Moose, which I am very excited about. But that came as a result of the Perl 6 OO design, so credit where credit is due.)

[chromatic]

That's exactly it; the second time I typed the relevant Perl 6 code, it felt natural. (See Porting Test::Builder to Perl 6.)