Lambda the Ultimate

Larry Wall: Apocalypse 4
started 1/17/2002; 11:27:30 PM - last post 1/18/2002; 10:20:04 AM

Ehud Lamm - Larry Wall: Apocalypse 4

1/17/2002; 11:27:30 PM (reads: 546, responses: 3)

Larry Wall: Apocalypse 4

In Perl 6, all blocks operate under the same rules. Effectively, every block is a kind of closure that can be run by user-defined constructs as well as built-ins.

Even more interesting is the list of accepted, rejected and withdrawn RFCs.

Language design in action...

Posted to general by Ehud Lamm on 1/17/02; 11:27:58 PM

Ehud Lamm - Re: Larry Wall: Apocalypse 4

1/18/2002; 4:44:49 AM (reads: 555, responses: 0)

Just noticed that the third Apocalypse is about operators. Being an Iverson fan, I just had to point this out.

Alex Moffat - Re: Larry Wall: Apocalypse 4

1/18/2002; 8:47:36 AM (reads: 540, responses: 0)

But I've come to the conclusion that I'd rather screw around (a little) with the "insignificant whitespace" rule than to require an extra unnatural delimiter. So

foo{'a'}

is a hash ref but

foo {'a'}

is foo followed by a block but elsewhere whitespace doesn't matter. I'm sorry, but I prefer languages where the syntax is as simple as possible and the rules are consistent to the sort of things perl does. I think that putting too much effort into trying to make the language behave "like the user expects" causes confusion when user's expectations are not the same. Reading the article makes me scared that many "clever" things are being introduced that provide yet more obfuscated and different ways to express the same concepts. OTOH this is turning into a bit of a rant so I'll stop.

Ehud Lamm - Re: Larry Wall: Apocalypse 4

1/18/2002; 10:20:04 AM (reads: 536, responses: 0)

I tend to agree. I am not a great fan of DWIM in general, and I like the freedom to use whitespace as I see fit, in order to enhance readability.