Tom Christiansen schrieb:
[snip]
> "Seems" may be the operative term here. Feckless worship of the
> false idol of universal popularity will, in attempting to please
> everyone, be doomed to please no one. A less proselytist message
> would be much useful, perhaps one more along the lines of: "This
> is who we are (read: what Perl is). If you like how we are, that's
> great--use Perl and be happy. But if you don't like who we are--that
> is, *how* we are--then don't use Perl; there are plenty of other
> languages for you."
[snip]
> >I'm aware, however, that switching from variable assignment to
> >name binding (like in Python or Scheme) is a very fundamental change
> >and therefore not an issue for perl6 (or is it?).
>
> I wasn't aware that it wasn't an issue. Larry once seriously
> contemplated this for perl4++, so why not revisit the notion?
I can't help being disoriented about the scope of the discussions
which will take place on this list. On the one hand there are
such statements as (taken from "Report on the Perl 6 Announcement" on
www.perl.com):
Can you hint at some of the language changes?
Larry said that everything was negotiable.
[...]consider any change at all, as long as it could be
translated.
On the other hand there are the "Perl must remain Perl"-like
statements.
Although these statements do not contradict each other they open up
an enormous space for discussions, which could lead to the following
problems:
* People refrain from making far reaching (possibly useful)
suggestions because they can't imagine them being
considered.
* The community could waste a lot of time producing
suggestions which are discarded at first sight because
they would lead Perl in an unwanted direction.
Is there any clear notion of the "Perl" part in Perl which should
remain its identity?
I read thinks like: "perl (the implementation) defines Perl", which
is not very helpful because the implementation is going to be rewritten
or "the tests define what's Perl", which is also problematic because
existing code (including tests) will likely have to be translated
to Perl 6 anyway.
-Edwin
