Most Perl 6 will look like Perl 5

[Matt Johnson]

On Fri, 25 Jan 2008, Abigail wrote:

> I think that currently even Damian is admitting that there are significant
> changes.

[...]

> Even something simple as C<< $hash {key} >> requires THREE changes, it
> will now become C<< %hash{'key'} >>.

Most of that doesn't scare me, but the sigil change makes me want to run 
screaming for the hills. Why completely change a paradigm that's worked 
fine for many years (that the sigil designates the return type) -- to 
something which appears to be different for the sake of difference (now 
the sigil designates the type we're looking into)?

Ugh. This kind of massive change to the language is part of the reason 
why many users of Perl5 are really going to be disinclined to move to 
Perl6; Perl5 works for them, and the porters are bringing in plenty of 
good stuff into the new trees -- say and smart match to name but two.

Perl4 to Perl5 was a fairly big jump, but at least it was (more or less) 
run-compatible. The fact that Joe Hacker will not be able to "upgrade" 
to Perl6 and know that his Perl5 code will work fine is going to be a 
massive stumbling block in its real world deployment and take-up.

Matt