11.05, Wednesday 4 Apr 2001

Apocalypse 1: The Ugly, the Bad, and the Good is the first in a series of articles by Larry Wall about the ongoing design of Perl 6 [via slashdot]. Perl has lost a lot of ground on the www; its string processing isn't as far ahead as it was, and not so important either since other languages have better xml handling. The object orientation isn't great, and as much as Perl is a language I very much enjoy programming in (there's a lot of flexibility, and the code can be elegant, concise and readable) it certainly needs an overhaul. Perl 6's object orientation should let it become more lightweight and streamlined when that's required, but the stuff they're planning... well, I'll be impressed if it actually all comes together.