Dan Sugalski writes:
: And on the other hand you have things like Forth where every program
: essentially defines its own variant of the language, and that works out
: reasonably well. (Granted it's more of a niche language, especially today,
: but that's probably more due to its RPN syntax)
Perhaps. I would also attribute Forth's lack of success in part to its
lack of standardization, but only in conjunction with its lack of
standardization, if you take my meaning. The core distribution was
too small to establish a common culture. Despite the fact that we're
trying to pare down the actual core core of Perl, I don't think the
standard distribution is going to fall into the error of providing
too little guidance on cultural matters, if for no other reason than
we must minimally provide for translated Perl 5 programs.
I would also argue that Forth's diversity was driven in part by its
lack of support for other programming paradigms. I don't see Perl
falling into that trap any time soon either...
Larry
