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in reply to Re^2: Modernizing the Postmodern Language?
in thread Modernizing the Postmodern Language?

He was clear about that "Standard Perl" is not related to "Perl 7"
I think everyone in this discussion is aware that this is officially the case, but the fact is that they are unavoidably connected in that Perl 7 and Standard Perl are both being driven by the same person. Don't forget that, in the Guac talk, Sawyer's clarification on this point was prompted by the moderator cutting in to tell him that the chat was filling up with people saying "OMG! The pumpking wants to gut Perl!!!"

So, yes, it is clear and correct that Standard Perl is not the plan for what Perl 7 (or 8, or any future official release) is meant to look like... but they are both the products of the same mind. To the extent that Standard Perl accurately represents Sawyer's concept of what the Platonic Ideal of Perl might look like, it also shows where he would like to see the language one day go, even if he knows that others would not agree with or accept those changes. (And note that I'm not saying it's a 100% accurate representation of Sawyer's "Ideal Perl", but there is almost certainly some high degree of similarity between the two.)

It's like a politician or a corporate leader expressing a personal opinion on a controversial topic. It's not the official position of their party or employer, but, despite that, it still reflects on the party/employer and (IMO, rightly) creates an impression that the party/employer at least accepts those views and may wish to unofficially further them, even if it doesn't openly endorse them.

  • Comment on Re^3: Modernizing the Postmodern Language?

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Re^4: Modernizing the Postmodern Language?
by LanX (Saint) on Jun 30, 2020 at 08:50 UTC
    So what?

    Many pumpkins mused about function signatures in the past and nothing happened in 20 years.

    And the history of Perl has a long list of "pumpkins" who resigned.

    We should be glad to have someone who does the job and has the guts to offer visions.

    A BNF parsable Perl which can be enforced by pragma is a quality in itself many people want.

    Let history decide, not polemics.

    Cheers Rolf
    (addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)
    Wikisyntax for the Monastery