On Mon, Mar 05, 2007 at 11:04:08AM +0900, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote: > Chad Perrin wrote: > >Worry not. Perl 6 development has long since crossed the point of no > >return. Too much work has already been done, with multiple, fairly > >complete testing implementations available and polished enough so that > >you could be fooled into thinking you have a release version of a new > >language in your hands. > > > So are you saying that one, should one be interested, could become a > Perl 6 user and try to write "killer apps" in Perl 6? How easy would > that be for someone who's a Perl 4 hacker that can copy working Perl 5 > examples out of a book and get them to execute? :) Perl 6 is actually a pretty significant departure from even Perl 5, let alone Perl 6. I can follow the syntax (being a Perl 5 guy), but it's not exactly the same language. To get the idea across . . . you can write simple scripts in Perl 4 and they'll still execute with a Perl 5 interpreter without making any major changes. The same, it seems, is not true of Perl 5 and Perl 6. It has been said many times that Perl 6 is more a new language than a new release version of an old language. For instance, try this on for size: Perl 6 apparently won't automatically "flatten" nested lists. At first glance, that might just look like a small design decision, but that fundamentally changes quite a lot about the language. No longer is dereferencing syntax necessary for complex data structures, for instance -- you can just pile a list inside a list. It looks like Perl 5 and Perl 6 will be forks of Perl, with Perl 5 development continuing into the future. Yes, you could probably write a production application in Perl 6 right now, but Perl 6 is a moving target right now. If you're planning to put Perl 6 code in production now, you'd better bundle it with an interpreter and be ready to support the interpreter yourself. You'd be better off, if you want to play with Perl 6 at this point, to do just that for now -- play with it. Learn it to the best of your ability, write toy scripts and even automate non-critical tasks, and submit bug reports when things don't work as expected. Right now, using Perl 6 is more a hobby and a way to help the further development of Perl 6 than a means of getting Real Work done. At least, that's my understanding. -- CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ] "The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit." - W. Somerset Maugham