This is more a comment on something you wrote about rather than about your writing itself. I'm trying to get my head around some Perl 6 design ideas because I find it helps me to program in a language (or in fact use any program) if I understand more about how the developers view the interface and concepts in their project.

Since Perl 6 is supposed to be largely about context, I find it surprising that one would put an adverb after an operator. It seems to me as if most adverbs are going to be used such that they can be thought of as setting a context for the expression. It seems some bracketing construct around the expression or a prefix adverb are either one clearer then a postfix adverb.

Placing the adverb after the operator reads more naturally if one is converting the phrase to English as one reads, as in "if fido is greater than scooter by the authority of the AKC" vs. "if, according to the AKC, fido is greater than scooter". I'm just not sure it makes the visual impact in the code that I'd want it to make.

I can understand that putting the optional parameters first is an unusual thing. It's often more difficult to parse, too. The parsing difficulty seems to arise more from the rarity of it than vice versa, though. I'm wondering if putting the optional "adverb" parameters last was fully considered or done from force of habit.

In reply to Re: my new article, "A Romp Through Infinity" by mr_mischief
in thread my new article, "A Romp Through Infinity" by John M. Dlugosz

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