[sf-perl] Perl 6 Now by Scott Walters (fwd)

[Matthew Lanier]

from sfpug member joe brenner...

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: 17 Aug 2005 19:26:01 -0000
Subject: Perl 6 Now by Scott Walters

Link: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/16/0511217
Posted by: timothy, on 2005-08-17 19:02:00

   from the now-and-then-or-later-or-earlier dept.
   [1]Joseph Brenner writes "Every now and then, a beginning programmer
   asks if there's any point in learning to program in Perl 5, when Perl
   6 is going to change everything soon. There are a number of answers to
   that: one is to point out that Perl 6 is still years away, another is
   to point out that it is promised that Perl 5 code will run under Perl
   6 without modification (a module that begins with the traditional
   "package" statement is Perl 5 code; if it begins with the new "class,"
   then it's Perl 6)." Read on for the rest of Brenner's review of Scott
   Walters' Programming in Perl 6 style using Perl 5, a book which
   answers that question a whole different way.

   Scott Walters here pursues what might be thought of as the third
   answer: you can learn Perl 6 now and immediately begin writing
   programs in a "Perl6ish" sort of way, using appropriate CPAN modules
   that have been used to implement approximations of Perl 6 behavior:
   Perl6::Variables, Perl6::Export, Perl6::Contexts, autobox,
   Perl6::Classes, Switch, and so on.
   There are many caveats about using these tricks in production code,
   however, and Scott Walters doesn't shy away from warning you about
   them (e.g. p.43 "Source filters are dangerous" where he discusses
   their increased start-up overhead and potential bugginess -- though he
   doesn't mention my own peeve which is that they're very confusing when
   you try and use the Perl debugger).
   So possibly the book is not really quite so well suited to an actual
   beginner-- who probably should not be told about "use Switch 'Perl6'",
   but the device of spending the early stages of the book directed
   toward a beginning audience makes it a very useful review for people
   like myself who have been reading the [2]Apocalypses, but don't
   remember every detail.
   And on the other hand, the book includes some prominent early warnings
   about common gotchas that beginning programmers seem to be prone to --
   e.g. using dynamically defined variables instead of just using hashes.
   The standards for writing English in the Perl world are pretty high --
   the core members of the Perl community have always cared a lot about
   clear writing, and it's arguably the world's best documented language
   (critics will no doubt add that it needs to be). Unfortunately, I
   can't say that Perl 6 Now quite lives up to this standard. This is a
   book that was written in a hurry, and it shows: hasty sentences and
   minor organizational problems abound (e.g. one or two items seem to be
   discussed in the wrong place; there are an awful lot of explicit
   forward references, and yet there's at least one place where something
   was used in an example before being discussed a few dozen pages
   later). But then in Scott Walters defense, this is certainly a book
   that needed to be written in a hurry, because its subject matter is
   such a moving target.
   And where the book really shines is in its code examples: short, clear
   and to the point; the author repeatedly shows how something can be
   done in Perl 5 code and how it's expected to work in Perl 6. These
   examples are always clearly labeled "Perl 5" or "Perl 6" in the
   comments, so that the two can't be confused.
   The subjects of some of the examples are pretty cool: e.g. he talks
   about using PDL ("Perl Data Language") to crunch audio data in MOD
   format, which I was completely unfamiliar with. A *.mod file
   essentially contains the "sheet music" for multiple parts (really,
   MIDI) plus sound samples that specify how notes will sound for each
   voice. This is discussed in Chapter 7, which is also the free sample
   chapter. I also liked random walking Arizona's highways as an example
   of Graph navigation (Chapter 8, p 159), and I appreciate the fact that
   he downplays inheritance in favor of delegation in his discussion of
   objects (Chapter 14, p. 262).
   All in all, this book is a fun read for the Perl fanatic.
   (Note: the title Perl 6 Now bears a strong resemblance to an emacs
   package I've been working on called perlnow.el, but there is no
   relation.)
     _________________________________________________________________

   You can purchase [3]Programming in Perl 6 style using Perl 5 from
   bn.com; it's also available in eBook format (password protected PDF,
   using your email as password) for $15. [4]Source code and and a sample
   chapter are available online: Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews
   -- to see your own review here, read the [5]book review guidelines,
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References

   1. mailto:doom at kzsu.REMOVECAPSstanfordANDTHENREMOVEMORECAPS.edu
   2. http://dev.perl.org/perl6/doc/apocalypse.html
   3. http://service.bfast.com/bfast/click?bfmid=2181&sourceid=39391960&isbn=1590593952
   4. http://www.apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=355
   5. http://slashdot.org/book.review.guidelines.shtml
   6. http://slashdot.org/submit.pl