Re: Perl 6 is too complex

[grinder]

<rant>

The thing is, there are lots of interesting theoretical advances that have been made in computer language theory over the past 20 years or so, but you'll be hard-pressed to find them implemented in a mainstream language. Perl 6 looks like it will cover a number of them (I'm thinking of the 3 Cs, closures, continuations and coroutines). If you don't need them, well that's fine. But when you need them, you need them bad, and nothing else will do.

There is always the debate as to whether Perl is a mainstream language or not, but there are lots of very bright people who take it as their language of choice. There has to be something in that. Someone far wiser than I said that the most intelligent programmers tend to be attracted to Perl. I believe that Perl 6 is going to continue to be a pleasant language to use for small tasks, but it's going to scale nicely for programming in the large.

I know two things. I know I was good at Perl before I started frequenting Perlmonks, and now I know that I am twice as good at Perl as I was before I started frequenting Perlmonks (but I probably still suck). Seeing what other people do with Perl, here, on this forum, has been a tremendous kick for me, for seeing how aspects of the language that I ignored, or was dimly aware of, can be used.

And I expect the same thing will happen with Perl 6. Sure, we'll all continue to write more or less Perl 5 in Perl 6. But every now and then, reading a node, at your own pace, you'll suddenly figure out how a new feature of Perl 6 can make your (programming) life easier. It won't come overnight, but it will happen. It'll be a slow bootstrapping process, and then all of a sudden we'll all grow into the new language, and wonder how we did without it before.

And then, in 2008, someone will post a message about validating Checkpoint™ Inspect™®© rulesets but sorry, I'm not allowed to use Perl 6, it must run in Perl 5, and we'll all laugh and the poor deluded programmer (or rather, his/her poor deluded manager). And someone will consider the node for reaping.

Sure, you could program in Haskell, Scheme, Icon or Eiffel, but you'll have difficulty finding friends with whom to talk about it. These languages have met with, as they say, a succes d'estime. Very nice, but not for me. Mondo cred points, but it doesn't put food on the table.

I must confess that I didn't understand an awful lot in A6. I'll have to reread it more than once to comprehend out all that Larry has written. Bear in mind that the apocalypses are not tutorials; you are not expected to learn how to program Perl 6 reading them. For that you should wait for Damian's Exegis 6. Once you have read E6, watch for the little light bulb to go off ding! above your head.

</rant>

print@_{sort keys %_},$/if%_=split//,'= & *a?b:e\f/h^h!j+n,o@o;r$s-t%t#u'

[crenz]

I'll have to reread it more than once to comprehend out all that Larry has written.

I guess Larry felt the same way.

Sorry, couldn't resist ;-)

Actually, I think someone should go and write an Apocalypsis-style essay about Perl 5, maybe about OO or XS. Just to show that Perl 5 isn't really that much simpler... I'm saying someone because I'm not familiar enough with the guts of Perl 5 myself :)