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.
> pretty soon it looks like Java, which people
> like myself really dislike.
No, there are far more important reasons for not liking
to program in java.
> 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).
> I've never seen [~] used anywhere as a string concat.
Based on what you said above, I would think you shouldn't
care what it was used for in other languages.
> Again, that's not to say it can't be in
> Perl 6, but it would be a real oddity.
Guess we can't have Perl containing any syntax oddities, eh?
Hypothesis: Eliminating syntactic oddities from Perl would
result in a language that "looks like" Java.
> 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.
> You could argue that . . .
> Is "just syntax" too, but that doesn't mean it's easy or fun.
I think such an argument would be wasting everyone's time.
The only thing we really want from the syntax is that it be
brief. And mildly mnemonic. Apart from that, there are no
rules.
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 ?
> No, but if Perl looks 95% like Java or C#, my prediction would be it
> will lose.
No. When you say "what it looks like", you're only talking about
syntactic features. As long as Perl can do in one "intuitive"
statement what takes 10 lines of Java or 100 lines of C, it will
win.
> 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.
> 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.
--
John Porter
It's a sky-blue sky
The satellites are out tonight
let x = x
