in reply to Capturing parenthesis and grouping square brackets

If one were to design a new programming language, from first principles and in the void Universe, I think your proposal has merit.

However there are two points that strongly speak against adapting it in Perl 6:

First, Perl 6 doesn't exist in a void Universe. Most programmers that try out Perl 6 have some experience with other programming languages, and we should try not to break too much for them. We use * for multiplication, not because it's the best thing to do, but because everybody does it. We do some stuff differently than the rest, but only where there is a very good reason.

Second, it's too late. This may surprise some folks, but there is a considerable Perl 6 code base and user base out there that would need rewriting and retraining. While the Perl 6 design team is still open to new ideas, there haven't been any radical changes to syntax or semantics in the last few years; and if there will be, it'll just delay things even more.

Perl 6 - the future is here, just unevenly distributed

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Re^2: Capturing parenthesis and grouping square brackets
by Jenda (Abbot) on Jun 20, 2013 at 23:49 UTC

    I wonder how come Perl6 looks like it was designed in the void Universe then. And yes, the claim that there exists a Perl6 (I'd really rather not drop the space, let's help Google distinguish Perl from this ... thing) user base does surprise me and I bet quite a few others. Any supporting evidence?

    Jenda
    Enoch was right!
    Enjoy the last years of Rome.

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        ... then filter those that did not submit a thing for six months as those most likely lost interest. And I do not believe there's actually a lot of people that use Perl6 and did not submit anything into this repository. While the fraction of CPAN authors might easily be one in thousands for Perl 5, I'd be very surprised if it was more than one in five for Perl6. Early adopters are different from ordinary users and there's so few modules for Perl6 that it just begs for releasing anything at all.

        Jenda
        Enoch was right!
        Enjoy the last years of Rome.

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      (Shrug...)   My take-away has always been that it is a project “in a void universe” ... just another group of Monty Pythons looking for the Holy Grail, and bootstrapping against the reputation of and some of the syntax of “Perl” in the doing of it.   But, all of it to no useful effect.   Quibbling, yes, even here, about how many milliseconds it takes to trigger your right index-finger muscle one more time (or less, as the case may be) in a quest to write things in a way suitable to The Knights Who Say –Er.”   They have been quibbling among themselves for more than six years, give-or-take, and by now I conclude that they will be doing so forever.   Even an encounter with the Holy Larry has not brought any closure to their efforts.   The mythos of “disruptive change” is highly over-rated.

        In this reddit post I have quoted you and said:

        I'll start with some empathy. Actually I'll go one better: sympathy. In the context of discussions about Perl 6 sundialsvc4 has in the past emphasized how big and complex the world's Perl 5 codebase is; how its ecosystem ought not be unduly disturbed without good reason; how the bottom line for the Perl community is getting stuff done; how Perl 6 has done an E17 (my term, not his); and how it's a really, really, really tall order for Perl 6 to do anything useful for the Perl 5 community. In general I agree with all these points and support folk continuing to emphasize them.

        But I had other things to say too. I care about this deeply and would appreciate it if you would be willing to take a look at the reddit post, perhaps mull it overnight, and consider my requests for ideas and restraint.

        Thanks for contributing to this discussion with humor even if it is a little acerbic. ;)

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In Section Meditations