I realise that I am an old and useless programmer, a dinosaur even, but is all this going to add up to a language that is:-
a) easier to learn
Yes. Not so much the stuff we're adding in A6, but other stuff like sigil reform, operator rationalization, chained comparisons, parens being required in fewer contexts, a proper switch statement, elimination of most punctuation variables, stronger emphasis on lexical scoping, cleaner regex syntax, etc. etc. is targeted directly at making the initial learning curve less steep and far less bumpy.
b) faster both to parse and execute
Absolutely. A great deal of our syntactic design work has been in removing ambiguities from the syntax (and hence excessive backtracking from the parser). You'll notice, for example, that the rules on when {...} is a hash and when it's a block have been drastically simplified.
Likewise we're adding many compile-time features, which will allow users (if they so choose) to move costs from run-time to compile-time. Features such as macros, and inlined subroutines, and strong types, and compile-time properties, and the compile-time binding operator will all have a positive effect.
Above all, there's the blisteringly fast new Parrot run-time engine underlying all of this.
c) still something that could reasonably be called perl?
That's our top priority, and the ultimate metric against which all of our design proposals are measured. There have already been several ideas that the entire design team really liked but which were left out simply because we concluded that "that's just not Perlish". Having Larry as the final arbiter helps a great deal there.
BTW, it's natural to feel nervous about that last point when the Apocalypses are huge and bursting with unfamiliar concepts and syntax. It's very important to remember that you're seeing a "diff" against Perl 5, not a complete language. My best estimate is that about 80% of Perl 6 will be essentially identical to Perl 5. Unfortunately, the Apocalypses show *only* the 20% of new stuff, which can make it feel like the new stuff is 100% of Perl 6. See:
http://www.samag.com/documents/s=4075/sam1013019189971/sam0203h.htm http://www.perlmonks.org/index.pl?node_id=238033
Damian
