On Tue, Jun 04, 2002 at 04:13:36PM +0100, Simon Cozens wrote: Hmm, June 4. Independence day, with an off by 1 error. Must be a C program involved somewhere. :-)
In brief, I'm with Damien on this one. IMHO C++ is an ugly bastard of a programming language because they cut the cord ineffectively and much too late in the process. OOPerl is an ugly bastard of a language. We have the opportunity to clean that up; we should sieze it. As for CPAN . . . don't get me started. CPAN is a blessing, but has become a curse as well. It's contents need to be razed to the ground and better/more conistant rules set up for how to do installations into and out of the standard trees. If you think this is a bitch now, just wait until simultaneous per-author and per-version installation and invocation is allowed as Larry has promised. I have this horrible fear of perl module installations becoming a bowl of spagetti that's been run thru a blender and mixed with a packet of jello. Speaking as a 20+-year sysadmin, if CPAN is used for Perl6 with those new features and without a massive clean, I foresee a nightmare. We have said that perl5 will be *mostly* mechanically translatable into perl6. IMHO, that's close enough. Full backwards compatibility leads to paralysis or an even further expansion of the complexity and bizarreness that is all too often perl. We should draw the line on translation at a program that will translate p5 source to p6 source. We should not auto-compile it and tolerate it forever; that way lies madness. Sorry to be so pessistic and negative, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it.