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Postings from May 2007
Re: Is Perl 6 too late?
From:
chromatic
Date:
May 14, 2007 08:04
Subject:
Re: Is Perl 6 too late?
Message ID:
200705140802.41302.chromatic@wgz.org
On Monday 14 May 2007 04:28:15 Thomas Wittek wrote:
> > I'm not a friend of potential conflicts between built-in operators and my
> > identifier names (and especially the conflicts between scalar, aggregate,
> > type, and function names).
> As I partially wrote Moritz, I
> a) don't think that it's the case very often. you have to write the
> sigil a thousand times where it wouldn't be useful for only 1 case where
> you'd have a name conflict.
> b) even if there would be a conflict, it might be considered bad style
> to use identical identifiers (besides the sigil) for different things
> (vars/objects/subs/operators/...).
theproblemlinguisticallyspeakingisthatsometimespunctuationishighlyimportant\
fromareadabilitystandpointyoumaynotliketheuseofspacescommasdashesupper\
casinghyphensandperiodsbutitmakesatremendousdifferencetoreadabilitywhether\
youlikeitornotasitmaybebadstyleifyoudontputspacesbetweentwowordsandtheresult\
lookslikeawordthatsomeonemaydefineinthefuture
There *are* a few linguists involved in Perl.
> So semicolons don't seem to be the best invention since sliced bread.
> There should be extra-syntax for the rare cases (multiline) and not for
> the common ones.
Somehow English seems to get by with periods at the ends of statements, though
almost no one pronounces them.
> But I don't like doing implicit type casting with operators.
> It's even discouraged in Perl5 as we have a warning for that.
> So maybe it'd be a good idea to completely drop it.
I can't really see that changing DWIM to DWTWM is anything but a step
backwards in Perlishness.
> >> People not only want code that _is_ sexy, but they also want it to
> >> _look_ sexy.
> At least almost everyone to whom I said, that I do most work in Perl,
> responded with some sentence containing the word "ugly" or "unreadable".
> To get away from that image, it's neccessary to do some radical changes
> I think.
I agree. You need less ignorant colleagues. I'm not sure Perl 6 can fix
that.
By the way, I'm still waiting to meet your cadre of Dylan hackers.
-- c