Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!qt.cs.utexas.edu!yale.edu!think.com!compass!worley From: worley@compass.com (Dale Worley) Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl Subject: Ruminations on the future of Perl Message-ID: Date: 27 Jun 91 20:34:39 GMT Sender: root@compass.com Organization: Compass, Inc., Wakefield, MA, U.S.A. Lines: 40 I've been giving some thought to the future of Perl. Of course, these comments are a mite arrogant, but at least they may help Larry plan. Probably the best thing for the long-run health of Perl (although the worst for everybody now involved with it) is to scrap it and redesign (and reimplement) it from the ground up. Having implemented and used Perl, we now know *what it should have been*. In my opinion, Perl's biggest weaknesses are (1) its syntax is fantastically complex (consider the multiple meanings of / and $), and (2) it is a collection of features more than a coherent language for expressing algorithms. However, rebuilding Perl is quite impractical. Not only would it involve an enormous amount of work, all existing Perl code would have to be rewritten. The other idea I have for the future of Perl is that it is now undergoing the transition from a "program" to a "program product". This means that the users are demanding that it be much more reliable, understandable, and portable than ever before. And, as Brooks noted, it takes about three times as much effort to produce a program product as to produce a program. (Consider the number of bugs and difficulties that version 4 is having, because of the number of users exercising it.) Where is all of this effort going to come from? Can we really expect Larry to devote the rest of his life to maintaining Perl? In order for Perl to take its rightful place as a standard Unix tool, it needs to become a product. However, I can't see how to finance the large amount of work that is going to be necessary on a continuing basis. Dale Dale Worley Compass, Inc. worley@compass.com -- If you can't drink a lobbyist's whiskey, take his money, sleep with his women and still vote against him in the morning, you don't belong in politics. -- Speaker of the California Assembly Jesse Unruh