On Thursday, August 14, 2003, at 07:00 AM, Alberto Manuel Brandão Simões wrote:
On Thu, 2003-08-14 at 14:49, Simon Cozens wrote:Just a hint: don't try writing it and revising it as the language changes.
I wrote a Perl 6 chapter for a book in December and it is now almost unusable
due to the pace of change.
Yes. That's why I'm asking :-) I can start looking to apocalypses and exegesis to have an idea of the structure and content, but not really write them. I would need a running prototype, too. And that's more difficult to find :)
I add a hearty "Amen" to Simon's advice.
In my own opinion -- which is worth approximately what you paid for it :-) -- things are probably pretty slushy until A12/E12 "Objects" comes out. AFAIK, that's due to be the next official A/E. I expect that _after_ that one, things will solidify rather rapidly; but be wary of doing too much before that, IMHO.
The A12/E12 problem is that the core concepts and syntax related to objects and types have wide repercussions on the syntax of everything else -- control structures, subroutines, operators, etc. etc. etc. Since *everything* can be described as being an operation upon a set of objects/types (and, after all, even csubs/subs/ops are themselves "objects", in the larger sense) until those object/type concepts are nailed down *quite* firmly, I would be a little wary of counting on the stability of anything else.
We've seen several examples already of things changing -- for the better! -- long after the A&Es for them have come out. I confidently prophesize at least one more big, scary round of that.
My personal advice is to wait until E12 comes out and is polished, and then go whole-hog. I wouldn't expect any major changes to happen after that, because the rest of the A&Es are less far-flung in scope.
MikeL
