use Perl

• Why? (Score:1)

  by educated_foo (3106)

  Man, that "is copy" is really annoying. Maybe it just takes some getting used to, but this strikes me as a default that's set wrong. Btw, why does everyone seem to enjoy writing everything backward-style in Perl 6? It seems like most of the code samples I see are of the form: @foo.rotate($x).perl.say Is there, within every Perl programmer, a Ruby/Smalltalk lover waiting to get out?
  • Re:Why? (Score:1)

    by chromatic (983) on 2006.12.18 22:11 (#52402) Homepage Journal

    Why is it backwards?

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    • Re: (Score:1)

      by educated_foo (3106)

      Well, I usually say "Cheney yourself" rather than "self Cheney" ;). More seriously, it encourages single dispatch by privileging the first argument, while I believe multiple dispatch is a better way to program.
    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Aristotle (5147)

      In Perl 5, people almost always do either this:

      sub foo {
          my $param = shift;
          # ...
      }

      or this:

      sub foo {
          my ( $param ) = @_;
          # ...
      }

      In both cases, you work on a copy. Almost never do people work directly with the values in @_. And that works out very well, because you almost never want to pass parameters by reference, almost always by value.

      But the Perl 6 setup defaults to giving you named aliases (as opposed to the array of aliases you get with Perl
      • Re: (Score:1)

        by chromatic (983)

        I actually meant "Why do you say that chained method calls are backwards?" I try to stay out of the perpetual pass by value/pass by reference wars. (I need some sort of self-discipline somewhere.)
        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Ovid (2709)

          While I knew what you were referring to, I do agree with Aristotle. In trying to work out the "99 Problems", I'm finding "is copy" is getting very annoying. I would be nice to have a simple syntax which would allow this, when it's appropriate.

          Now if only I knew someone on the Perl 6 design team to explain that too ... :)