[tpm] [Fwd: Re: Perl as a career]

[arocker at vex.net]

>From <Martin at Cleaver.org>
>
> If Perl is to compete I believe it would serve itself by focusing the
> energies of its users on a smaller set.
>
> If one thing would get my attention for Perl 6 it would be a "fewer ways
> to do something" mentality. Convention over Configuration and all that.
>

I agree. Back at the dawn of time, world+dog had unique CP/M floppy disk
formats, which made software distribution a nightmare. IBM's single
greatest contribution to personal computing was a standard format that
everyone would implement because they had to.

I'm not sufficiently familiar with the problem to identify the essential
parts of it, but I expect the Unix tool approach would work here as well.
I.e., each step handled by a single-purpose program with a standard
interface for combinations (and replacement if a better answer surfaces).
Or is the problem sufficiently complex that a layered architecture (as in
networking and Unix itself required?)