introspection (and Perl 6)

[Chris Benson]

On Wed, Jan 23, 2008 at 02:58:02PM -0500, Jeff Anderson wrote:
> 
> My biggest gripe is this: are the new features of Perl 6 going to make
> my job easier?
> 
> Probably not. In fact, most likely not.

But will you be doing the same things?

When I wrote in P4, I used a custom-built isqlcisamdtcurseperl (Informix +
C-ISAM + C-ISAM date library + libcurses) and little other external code.
All I wrote were sub-100 line utility scripts, run against my employers
accounting data.

This week I've been preparing a portfolio for a job interview and I'm
rather impressed at all the things I've done (in Perl) over the last few
years: a lot of web apps, still some trad data processing that I would
have done in COBOL 30 years ago, but I'm also generating PDFs and graphics
on the fly, I've got networked data-collection programs, real-time
monitoring of firewall logs, ... all sorts of stuff I couldn't have
imagined doing in P4.

So I'm hoping P6 will give me enough of an upgrade to see me to, if not
retirement, a good bit of the way there.
 
> I really feel that the developers of Perl 6 have left the real world
> behind, and are now living in some fantasy world where being cool is
> more virtuous than being "normal."

I think we both need to drink in some of the ConwayKoolAid and implement
some next-gen Collective Intelligence apps in the lunch hour and do a
Paul Graham.  :-)

> But what the hell do i know, right? :)

Amen.
-- 
Chris Benson