For programming languages to evolve and flourish, we all need to accept other people's viewpoints and continue open-minded, civil and respectful dialogue.
In science, scientists always question everything; why shouldn't we question some features and point out deficiencies of Perl 5 which after version 5.10 became really stale feature-wise -- the last important addition was the addition of state variables in 5.10. Partially this happened as most resources were reallocated to Perl 6 (The Perl 6 project was announced in 2000), a robust interpreter for which failed to materialize for too long: the situation which also slowed down Perl 5 interpreter development.
The question arise: Should it be possible on perlmonks to criticize some aspects of Perl 5 current features and implementation as well as its use without being denigrated as a reward?
At least after the split Perl 5 has theoretical chances to stand on its own, and evolve like other languages evolved (for example, FORTRAN after 1977 adopted 11 years cycle for new versions). As Perl 5.10 was released in 2007, now it is 13 years since this date and Perl 7 is really overdue. The question is what to include and what to exclude and what glaring flaws need to be rectified (typically a new version of a programming language tries to rectify the most glaring design flaws in the language and introduce changes that could not be implemented while retaining full backward compatibility.)
Brian D Foy post that announced this new version is really weak. It essentially states "We decided to rename 5.32 and you all should be happy." It does not contain any new ideas, just the desire to have new version of Perl as Perl 5.32 with few new defaults (which BTW will break compatibility with old scripts at least with 5.8 and earlier versions scripts as not all of them use strict pragma, and strict pragma implementation still has its own set of problems ).
The question arises: Whether the game worth candles? Unless the new editions of O'Reilly books is the goal. That's why I provided this contribution, suggesting some minor enhancements which might better justify calling the new version Perl 7. And what I got in return ?
I hoped that this post would be a start of the meaningful discussion. But people like you turned it into a flame-fest.
It looks like it is impossible to have a rational fact-based discussion on this subject with zealots like you.
In reply to Re^15: What esteemed monks think about changes necessary/desirable in Perl 7 outside of OO staff (don't feed)
by likbez
in thread What esteemed monks think about changes necessary/desirable in Perl 7 outside of OO staff
by likbez
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