introspection (and Perl 6)

[chromatic]

On Wednesday 23 January 2008 13:30:09 Jeff Anderson wrote:

> Sorry, but Perl 6 is just trying to hard to add every single kitchen
> sink on the planet.

That's a ballsy statement coming from someone who hasn't bothered to learn the 
language or write any code in it, especially after calling @Larry snobs.

I don't particularly care if you ever use Perl 6 or learn it, but wouldn't it 
be easier to admit that you're:

1) worried about the future of Perl 5, given that the existence and hopefully 
eventual release of Perl 6 makes it look like a dead end

2) afraid of change, especially that it makes some of your experience in Perl 
5 less valuable

3) worried that learning Perl 6 will take just too much time and energy

4) afraid that suddenly you won't be able to look up syntax in the manual, as 
if syntax had much to do with maintainability of actual working useful 
programs

>From my point of view, it would just be *super* if you prefaced 
publicly-disseminated, hyper-generalized, and badly untrue statements such as 
the quoted with hints to the reader such as "My faith-based feelings tell me 
that..." or "In accordance with prophecy..." or "Dem bones, dey nevah 
lie...".

It's not as if anyone in @Larry is going around mischaracterizing you or your 
work in public.

In conclusion, here are some select quotes from @snob[0] (I hope "my @snob := 
@Larry" is sufficiently clear in context) regarding learnability versus 
expressiveness from OSDC::Israel almost two years ago:

	With a natural language you learn as you go. You know, you learn it once and 	
	use it many times. So, you should optimize for expressiveness and not for 	
	ease of learnability. Learnability is OK, but expressiveness is more 	
	important.

	Again, we're optimizing for expressiveness, not necessarily learnability.

	And this is how natural languages evolve, they just make little changes to 	
	the grammar and the dictionary all the time. It's also how people learn 	
	language. You learn the simple thing and then you learn other things in terms 	
	of those things.

http://www.perl.org.il/presentations/larry-wall-present-continuous-future-perfect/transcript.html

-- c