An interview with Larry Wall (LinuxVoice)

Yeah. That's gone in Perl 6:

my @foo = 0,1,2,3; say @foo[1];
1

> scalar context vs. list context

Yeah. Context is still very much a thing in Perl 6.

> I'm getting the distinct impression that Perl 6 should not have been called Perl.

Right. I can see it being renamed sometime in the next 5 years, with the leading candidate new name being Camelia. But Larry has refused to even consider that prior to getting a 6.0.0 shipped (which is currently scheduled for this Christmas).

> If it ever actually comes around it will create lots of confusion among our customers because they will have to figure out whether they want us to teach Perl 5 or Perl 6.

I'm sure it's going to put in enough of an appearance globally to at least cause confusion. :)

> In any case, demand for Perl classes hereabouts has dwindled to near-zero anyway.

Where's here?

> I'm teaching way more Python these days than Perl, and I can't even say I'm sorry.

Sure. I like the Perl 5 community, and love Perl 6, but when I've eased newbies into scripting in the last few years I've started with Python, not Perl.

> I don't use Perl for new projects anymore. Not if the code will take more than one screenful of lines, anyway.

I think the same is true of a lot of folk.

The Perl 6 design is clearly aiming at programming-in-the-large just as much as it is scripting. But the only semi-serious test of its characteristics in that regard that I'm aware of is the compiler toolchain. So it seems like the jury is going to still be out for at least another few years on that.