At 04:40 PM 23/04/2001 -0400, John Porter wrote:
>Nathan Wiger wrote:
> > if you changed Perl's syntax too radically you
> > would almost certainly lose programmers.
>
>I disagree. Changing the semantics of Perl to make it more
>powerful is something every perl programmer would be happy
>about. Consequent changes to the syntax is something we
>would live with.
I don't see the semantic change to make it more powerful that is behind
changing -> to . and . to ~.
> > One of the reasons I program in Perl as my
> > primary language is *because of* the syntax.
>
>With all due respect, I don't believe that's why you,
>or anyone else, likes to program in Perl.
>It's a powerful, high-level language. I don't care
>so much about the details of the syntax, as long as
>it supports the semantics (and has brackets that let
>me bounce on the % key in vi, of course).
IMHO, Ruby or Python is almost as powerful as Perl, but I never learnt them
because of their messy syntax.
> > syntax is a big part of a language.
>
>Not as big as you seem to think.
>We could y/$@%/@%$/ and all we'd really lose is a little
>mnemonic value.
Probably Perl wouldn't be as successful as it is in spite of y/$@%/@%$/.
>The only thing we really want from the syntax is that it be
>brief. And mildly mnemonic. Apart from that, there are no
>rules.
Considering this is to be the successor of Perl 5, not steep changes would
be appreciated.
>Besides that, I think most Perl programmers would be willing
>to trade a tiny bit of typing ease for a big gain in power.
>I know I would. If Perl became so much more powerful, that
>you could do in one line of Perl6 what it takes 10 lines of
>Perl5, who cares if you have to write $a ~ $b instead of
>$a . $b ? Or $a.b instead of $a->b ?
I still haven't seen the power gain in s/->/./ and s/./~/ (not in this
order :-). There's a typing gain, and maybe a clarity gain for calling
methods (which isn't true for concatenating strings).
> > If you throw out everything from the tens of previous years
> > of Perl,
>
>Sorry, changing -> to . or . to ~ is not throwing out ten years
>of Perl.
But what is it winning, in semantic terms?
> > then you cause a whole bunch of JAPH's to relearn lots. And
> > then, these people might be prompted to say "Hey, if I have to relearn
> > all this, let me check out some alternatives."
>
>Well they certainly won't run to Java.
>They might look at Pythong -- but there they'll find syntactic
>peculiarities that make Perl6 look like Ada.
s/Perl6/Perl5/;s/Ada/Befunge/;$_.=' ;-)';
- Branden
