Perl is an ad-hoc irregular jumble of functionality... and that is A-OK

[princepawn]

And in 6 years as a software developer in Perl, I have to tell you, that is just fine. Perl (up to and including version 5) was built on immediate obvious simple solutions to real world problems.

Larry Wall, as developer of a Usenet news reader amongst other things, had practicality as the first and maybe only thing in his mind when developing his language.

So:

1. Is perl an elegantly crafted highly regular software architecture for problem solution? NO
2. Is perl a well thought-out result of hours and hours of deliberation over the perfect language? NO
3. Is perl solvings thousands and thousands of problems this very moment in all spheres of IT? YES

And for that reason, criticisms (such as the title) really dont hold much water.

PHP

With PHP, we can apply a weight of 10,000 to each of items 1 through 3 in the previous section. If Lisp looks like oatmeal with fingernail clippings in it, PHP looks like the floor around the bathroom after a wild frat party. It is 10,000 times more ugly than Perl. 10,000 times more stream of consciousness and inscrutable to reason. But for all its shortcomings, PHP is kicking much ass. When you can download a tar file, uncompress and have spiffy looking blogs, forums, mysql interfaces, content management systems, and more in under 1 hour, then you can only STFU unless you (AND YOUR LANGUAGE) can do the same.

ICFP 2007

I dont know how the hay they did but they outdid every elegant, articulate functional language on the planet.

Perl 6

You know, Nicklaus Wirth called his successor to Pascal "Oberon." It was inspired by Pascal, didn't look too different, but he gave it another name.

In terms of version numbers Perl 6 should be Perl 90 or something. It is not a smooth transition using items 1 to 3 as criteria. It is completely the opposite. It is an attempt to be elegant and well thought out and it is doing so in a glass house away from real world demands and constraints. So my suggestion is: "Rename Perl 6 to something else entirely, because it is not in the spirit of Perl in the least bit."

You may now downvote your ass off.

Have a nice day!

[Mutant]

Not sure I agree on your assertion that Perl 6 is not the least bit Perl like. I think PHP is so successful because it fully embraces "Worse Is Better", which is kind of what you're alluding to. Perl 5, to some extent, does too, but it's attempted to move towards a more "correct" design, while still being genuinely better (and Perlish). I think a good example of this is the strict pragma.

Perl 6 (at least as it seems from where I'm standing) is an attempt to re-design Perl with a "Better is Better" approach. Hopefully it won't sacrifice too much of it's ability to get the job done, or it's Perlish-ness.

People say Perl 6 is going to be obsolete once it's released because it's taking so long. I actually think the real challenge for Perl 6 is if the whole "Better is Better" approach can actually work. Many have tried before, many have failed. See: Lisp

[lidden]

See -> Re^2: What's wrong with Perl 6?