Re: A6: Signature zones and such

[Damian Conway]

Austin Hastings wrote:

The design team has already considered this idea, and my problem
with it then (and now) is that it's inconsistent with other forms
of variable declaration:
        my sub foo( ?$bar is constant = 1 ) {...}   # OKAY
        my           $bar is constant = 1;          # OKAY
        my sub foo( ?$bar = 1 is constant ) {...}   # OKAY
        my           $bar = 1 is constant;          # KABOOM!
and thereby lays a cognitive trap for programmers.
 
1- Good catch, and all, but that's the kind of thing (like @ in
strings) that gets a warning emitted from the compiler -- not the kind
of thing that makes it prohibitive to support the feature.
Quite possibly. Except that, the more of these kinds of cognitive dissonances 
a language has, the harder it is to learn and use. I see part of my job as 
being to keep an eye on how many such special cases we're adding (and 
removing!) from Perl 6. With the goal that the overall cognitive load of the 
language doesn't go up.


I don't know...maybe I'm worrying too much.
But then, that's part of my job. ;-)
 
2- Yeah! ... umm, are we *paying* you for this?
Not any more. In fact, like Larry and several others on the design team, I'm 
now paying for the privilege of doing it. ;-)

Damian