On Monday 30 July 2001 06:32 pm, Phil wrote:

> I saw this in Larry's latest State of the Onion.  It really seems like
> Perl6 will be a very different language than the current incarnation
> of Perl.  This seems like a great time to convince a lot of Perl
> programmers to take a look at Ruby - either way (moving to Perl6 or to
> Ruby) will require them to learn a new language.  This seems to eliminate
> the commonly heard objection "why should I learn a new language?"
> (because unless you want to stay with Perl5 forever, you'll have to anyway)
> and thus presents a good opportunity for Ruby.

One word: CPAN. The intention is to allow translation from Perl5 to Perl6 for 
most modules (of course, I have one in CPAN that likely won't translate, 
but...).

I think that Ruby really needs to get on the ball with respect to something 
like CPAN. RAA is currently too haphazard. I'm sure that this has been 
discussed before on the list, so I won't get into it here. But I think that 
the switch to Perl6 gives Ruby a chance to catch up somewhat -- _if_ the 
community gets its act together on a good library repository. I believe Ben 
Tilly has given some good advice on this from a Perl viewpoint.

Another thing is that many Perl programmers aren't convinced that OO is a 
Good Thing.

-- 
Ned Konz
currently: Stanwood, WA
email:     ned / bike-nomad.com
homepage:  http://bike-nomad.com