Most Perl 6 will look like Perl 5

[Matt S Trout]

On Fri, Jan 25, 2008 at 10:22:01AM +0000, Struan Donald wrote:
> * at 25/01 07:23 +0000 Matt S Trout said:
> > On Thu, Jan 24, 2008 at 03:09:08PM -0800, Ovid wrote:
> > > However, some things in Perl 5 which are virtually impossible to do
> > > will now be possible.
> > 
> > Somebody should make a list of those somewhere.
> > 
> > Then we can implement them in perl5 and stop worrying about vapor6,
> > the brilliant language design research project that lots of people seem to
> > be wasting their lives trying to implement.
> 
> I know this is london.pm where snarkiness is next to cleanliness but
> the level of it on both sides of the Perl 6 debate seems way too
> close to 11. 

I'm not on either side. I think it's produced some brilliant ideas, which
we should steal for perl5 where possible/feasible/desired.

The thing I hate is that people seem to be focusing on a complete scratch
implementation that I don't see being usable for quite some time. Of course,
lisp was originally a piece of research that wasn't even supposed to be
implemented, so 'waste' is probably the wrong word.

I'd just rather focus on what we can do now - the external perception of
perl6 has done more damage to perl5 marketing than any actual non-perl
language, I think, and that doesn't seem to be stopping.

-- 
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