Recently, particle admitted that, "i have changed my regular expression style significantly as of late. my list of reasons includes ... preparing for perl 6."

This seems like a great idea for someone in my position.

Like anyone else, I've been following the Apocalypse and Exegesis articles with baited breath. On the one hand, changes to regular expressions are fascinating and exciting - but on the other hand, the changes are a bit intimidating and scary. (I think that if you aren't intimidated by the group discussions linked from "this week on perl6", then you're probably one of the folks that is involved in the discussion - or should be! I'm neither.)

Being excited and intimidated by a language is all fine and well - so far, I've been stoking my excitement, and damping my intimidation by hoping for a whole slew of "Introducing Perl 6" books from our favorite publisher. But what would really help me is to be able to actually *do* something.

For me, doing something really has a limited meaning. I don't have a copy of the current parrot and Perl6 cvs repositories; I don't have a Perl6 sandbox (much as I would like to see an article on how to set one up: are there any?) to scratch around in. Chances are I won't write a lick of Perl6 code until it's available here.

So, since reading the first Apocalypse, I've been waiting with trepidation: when Perl6 comes out, I'll most likely suffer from cognitive dissonance. That is, I'll find myself saying, "Sheesh, I know how to get this program running in Perl 5 syntax... why don't it work in Perl6?".

(Yes, I've heard that there will be parsers to convert from Perl5 code to Perl6 code - and yes, I've heard that there'll be a lot of backwards compatibility between Perl6 and Perl5 syntax. But honestly, I don't want to continue to speak Latin, knowing that people can translate it into Spanish. I don't want to continue to speak Latin, knowing that many Spaniards can understand me. I wanna learn the new language, and thereby express myself how I want to.)

I've been sitting back and fretting: "Oh dear, once Perl6 comes out, it'll be 2 months before I can write any code again...". particle has changed how ve writes regular expressions. This is such a good idea that I'm going to do the same. Sure, it'll be more work for me right now to change how I write regexes - but the change isn't all that major. It'll be one less unfamiliar thing to deal with when Perl6 comes.

So, monks, my question to you: how are you preparing for The Apocalypse? How do you intend to avoid cognitive dissonance?

blyman
setenv EXINIT 'set noai ts=2'

In reply to Cognitive dissonance and The Apocalypse by belden

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