(moved from OOP and the Perl core per suggestion in rt)

I am not sure how these Quests work, but I will offer something to this notion. Why have all attempts to add a MOP or some sort of "object system" to Perl failed?

The answer for me is simple. The resulting attempts have, rather than created an idiomatically consistent linguistic interface to Perl, created monstrousities that have lead us away from perl. Moose and all its bastard children are perfect examples. Not only have they simply created new declarative and unrecongizable mini-languages with-in perl, but they have spurred wasted time and talent in totally separate languages with-out. Moose (and it's elk), Perl 6/Rakudo/Pugs/Parrot/MoarVM, etc have become poisoned pills that shattered the community and distracted us from true enlightenment. I've watch this train wreck for nearly 20 years and each passing year only confirms for me that this is true. Every fight, every new release, every name change.

Recently I have seen something that gives me true hope that an idiomatically consistent approach to objects in Perl is possible. That thing is Util::H2O. I am not saying it is perfect, but hot dang it's exciting to see what can happen as a post-modern approach to OOP begins to spring to light.

One last thing I has point out is any successful OOP in Perl shall recognize a couple of things:

• Perl doesn't have strong types (other than, yanno - hashes, arrays, scalars, etc); and it never will.
• Perl is a forever language. It will never die, therefore we must accept its "limitations" (in quotes because I don't think they exist)
• Any "OOP" will simultaneously looks like beautiful, idiomatic Perl to those who can appreciate it - and satisfy the itch (I say, chaffe) to have TRUE_OOP_IN_PERL^tm.

Previously I brought up Util::H2O. In closing, I shall bring up a great example of a different kind of language that was cast into the mold of Perl by people who love Perl. PDL is a data language created by such people (and by their own admission). Notable in their handbook 1 is this experpt:

This is an important PDL concept: PDL stores its data arrays in simple perl variables ($a, $x,
$y, $MyData, etc.). PDL data arrays are special arrays which use a more efficient, compact
storage than standard perl arrays (@a, @x, ...) and are much faster to access for numerical
computations.

What is my point? Well, this is important, too: up to now people who have championed OOP in Perl have been people who arguably HATE Perl. What shall succeed will be done so by thoses who LOVE Perl and everything about it. Maybe it's the person who wrote Util::H2O. Maybe it's someone who has yet to be born. I have no idea. But I do know that this is how I feel after 20 years of being immersed in Perl.

References

1. PDL Handbook

Update In addition to finding a perlish way to have OOP, also having a perlish to do through SMP threading would also have a tremendous impact. I suspect the path to this is withing something like PDL, which I believe has the right approach and is the right place for introducting some shared memory type things (if it's not there already, been a while).

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