Curtis “Ovid” Poe
2 HN recommenders · recommended in 3 months, 2015
49:06 · 6.3K views · Mar 4, 2015
Curtis Poe's FOSDEM talk arguing that day-to-day Perl 6 is far simpler than its enthusiasts' talk of exotic features suggests. He compares basic math and string handling across languages.
Offered as a pragmatic, convincing counter to the idea that Perl 6 is too strange to use.
3 comments from Hacker News
Perl 6 isn't as complex as people make it out to be. I have friends who are race car enthusiasts who could go in to excruciating detail about cars and if you don't know how to drive, it could seem daunting. The reality is that most of us get in to our car and just drive. That's part of the issue with Perl 6: its proponents get very excited about it and write about all the really cool stuff you can do with it, but for those who don't know the language, it sounds intimidating. Here's a talk I gave at FOSDEM explaining how day-to-day Perl 6 is fairly straightforward and easier than people think: this video
The typing and grammar mechanism aren't common, it may influence other languages. Also, Perl managed to survive even without mainstream relevance so the community will probably keep enjoying it. ps: I found this talk pretty convincing about pragmatism this video also: [LINK]
> [lang X] doesn't handle [basic math] correctly among other things. From a recent talk[1], what are x, y, z in the following? x = 7 ÷ 2; y = -7 ÷ 2; z = .1 + .2 - .3 x y z 3.5 -3.5 0 # human 3 ? tiny number # c89; ? depends on compiler 3 -4 tiny number # ruby 3 -4 tiny number # python 2/3 3 -3 0 # bc 3.5 -3.5 tiny number # perl5 3.5 -3.5 0 # perl6 ---- It isn't just basic math. How "long" is the following string? ปฏิบัติจริง 7 characters # human len("ปฏิบัติจริง") = 33 # python 2 len("ปฏิบัติจริง") = 11 # python 3 "ปฏิบัติจริง".length = ? # ruby (For Ruby, I've found "the core language does not provide a way to count [human perceived characters]". [3] Is that still correct or out of date?) ---- > Perl suffers from having too many magical operators that makes it hard to reason about a snippet of code. I feel Python strikes the right balance. To quote Larry Wall, "Perl 6 ... has been rethought and rebalanced on every level".[4] It might be interesting for you to pick a couple Perl 5 operators that you consider too magical; then we could look at the merits and demerits of those ops in Perl 5 and their equivalents in Python and Perl 6. > It's very easy to express ideas I have in mind without worrying about the details [of Python, now, and Perl, back in the day] This, of course, has explicitly been a deliberate focus of all the Perls. Part of the point of Perl 6 was to remove the bits in Perl 5 that were problematic (including some "too cute/weird" stuff) and to introduce much ni