I agree that the dot syntax is a bit easier to type, and I think overall the syntactic change is worth the (very small, for me anyway) pain it takes to re-learn. A more significant change, in my mind, is how most object code will actually be written. It won't take nearly as much code to accomplish the same goals. Consider an example:
class Point {
has $.x;
has $.y;
method str {
return $.x ~ "x" ~ $.y;
}
}
my $point = Point.new(x => 2, y => 3);
say $point.str;
Compared to the equivalent Perl 5:
{
package Point;
sub new {
my $name = shift;
my %attr = @_;
return bless { %attr }, $name;
}
sub x {
my $self = shift;
return $self->{x};
}
sub y {
my $self = shift;
return $self->{y};
}
sub str {
my $self = shift;
return $self->x . "x" . $self->y;
}
}
my $point = Point->new(x => 2, y => 3);
print $point->str, "\n";
I think you'll agree that the Perl 6 version makes it a lot easier to get on to the heart of the matter. I really like it.
(Of course, we can get most of the same conciseness in Perl 5 with Moose, which I am very excited about. But that came as a result of the Perl 6 OO design, so credit where credit is due.)