[tpm] Discipline required.

[arocker at Vex.Net]

No, not that kind. :-)* I'm talking about Perl 6.

There's a definition of a gentleman; "A man who knows how to play the
accordion, and doesn't". Another one may well be "A Perl 6 maven is
someone who understands the language well enough to redefine it, and
doesn't."

The facilities available to define (and redefine) operators and other
features would be easy to abuse, creating ill-documented and confusing
code, and giving the language an unfortunate reputation before it has a
chance to become established. It's ridiculously rich, and consequently
needs time to learn, a job which is not made easier by instability. We
need to build on rock for a while, not sand.

Even some of the facilities provided by features like multi subs have the
unfortunate possibility of creating "spooky action at a distance", if not
used carefully. (Changes in non-visible, and apparently unrelated, code
could change behaviours.)

I'm not criticising P6, or its design, just suggesting that like any
powerful thing, it needs to be handled carefully until well understood.