--- Larry Wall wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 25, 2005 at 05:24:52PM +0200, Michele Dondi wrote:
> : But maybe that's just me. Whatever, I guess that the {casual,average}
> : programmer may be scared by its richness and complexity.
>
> But we're trying to design the OO features (indeed, all of Perl 6)
> such that you can usefully cargo cult those aspects that are of
> immediate interest without being forced to learn the whole thing.
> It's not the number one design goal, but it's right up there.
Interesting. I just finished reading Stroustrup's thoughts on evolution
and language design at:
http://www.research.att.com/~bs/rules.pdf
and noticed he is similarly concerned about making his language easier
for the casual/novice programmer:
"If you are a physicist needing to do a few calculations a week,
an expert in some business processes involving software, or a
student learning to program, you want to learn only as many
language facilities as you need to get your job done."
He also argues in favour of general features over specialized ones:
"C++0x will not be a "Windows language" or a "Web Language" ... "
which reminded me of people characterizing Perl as a "text processing
language" or a "CGI language".
Just as Perl 5 evolved Perl 4 from a "scripting/text processing language"
to a general purpose one (with CPAN modules filling many specialized
niches), Perl 6 seems to be evolving still further down that path,
being applicable to more and varied domains than Perl 5 was.
/-\
Send instant messages to your online friends http://au.messenger.yahoo.com
