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[ben_tilly@hotmail.com: Glad I am not on bootstrap]

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From:
Simon Cozens
Date:
July 26, 2000 19:51
Subject:
[ben_tilly@hotmail.com: Glad I am not on bootstrap]
Message ID:
20000727115024.A9564@othersideofthe.earth.li
Ben sent me this privately, with permission to forward it.
He makes a bunch of points I agree with, so this saves me time
typing them out. :)

Simon

----- Forwarded message from Ben Tilly <ben_tilly@hotmail.com> -----
Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 22:29:56 EDT
From: "Ben Tilly" <ben_tilly@hotmail.com>
Subject: Glad I am not on bootstrap
To: simon@cozens.net

Talk about high-volume traffic!

I decided to not show up there because I did not have enough to contribute 
to the discussion.  I still don't, nor would I have time to follow it.

My one suggestion for them though.  Have one list.  But have that list 
require that titles have keywords for which sub-list it would be on.  Any 
email to the list with a title that did not fit the format would be 
rejected.

Then anyone with a mail-filter can get the effect of multiple lists.  But 
anyone who wants (like Simon and Russ) could see the whole list in all its 
gory detail.

Oh, and the idea of a pluggable front-end.  That was me.  I suggested it 
because I like Perl just how it is, but there is a real class of problems 
facing real people that Perl cannot addres, and it could.  And that class of 
problems is getting a programming language in the hands of people from very 
different linguistic backgrounds from English.

To clarify the proposal:

1. It should be possible for Perl to have multiple parsing front-ends that 
can be switched between.

2. There should be support for writing a simply type of module that does 
nothing more than alias functions and variables and provide localized 
documentation to make it easy to "port" Perl modules to a different 
language.

3. This allows distribution of support by the fact that whoever does the 
translation de facto becomes the point person for supporting people who use 
that localized version of the module. :-)

As a perfectly grotesque note: this allows for significant changes in the 
Perl language to be acceptable in Perl 6, so long as there was a parser that 
could still work for Perl 5 modules.

To *really* clarify the proposal.

I threw that out as an idea that I called bad.  I still think it is bad.  I 
also think that it is an inevitable step that someone will take soon (ie 
before Perl 7), and I think that whatever community first takes it will find 
that the benefits far outweigh the disadvantages.  So if anyone else thinks 
it is bad, well I agree.  That does not mean that it is wrong though...

Cheers,
Ben
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----- End forwarded message -----
-- 
 * Progress (n.): The process through which Usenet has evolved from
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