TODO

Here are a bunch of project ideas, both for me and for anyone else who
wants to help out.  Starred items are ones I've already spent time
thinking about; check with me if you want to build on that.  Plussed
items are considered a priority for v3.

EASY

   Add your favorite missing function to the setting, with tests.
   In particular, I could use: sprintf, dir, write, close, split, ...

   Add $*ARGFILES, %*ENV, your favorite other *-var.

   Give labels methods to invoke control operations.

   Implement Sub.leave and CallFrame.leave

   Add more benchmarks to perf/.

   Character class expressions like [[a .. A] & [\W]]

   ::> cut syntax.

   Binding to values like @PROCESS::ARGS doesn't contextualize correctly.  Fix.

   Fudge and run your favorite spectest file.

   Stuff spectests are blocking on: "Block", "&hash", "writable $_",
   "closure for", "ranges of chars", "gather for",

   At least parsing Int et al on my-decls would help a lot

MEDIUM

   Implement your favorite ?-vars.

   Finish the set of Num operators, includig number-theoretic and
   transcedental functions.

  *Implement &?BLOCK and &?ROUTINE.

   Break down Sub into a hierarchy Code->Block->Routine->Sub->Method.

   Implement buffer types and binary I/O.

   Implement a general socket API.

   Design and implement a generic system for multiplexed and non-blocking I/O.

  *CATCH and CONTROL blocks.

 + Jump table optimization for when chains.

 + Find out what readonly subs are supposed to do with lists, etc and implement
   that.  Also add return-rw, take-rw, and the is rw trait for subs and attrs.

  *Implement BUILD submethod calling.

   Methods with variable names need to call the correct action method.  (See
   the horrible hack in NieczaActions.FALLBACK).

   Audit accelerated context routines for correct undefined value and odd
   representation handling.  +Num shouldn't crash, etc.

 + Run MAIN without a temporary file (needed for eval knockoff).

HARD

   Design and implement some sort of NFG thing that allows use codes, graphs,
   etc and handles canonical equivalence in regexes.

   Determine the best way to map Perl6 process-think onto Windows/.NET
   process think.  Then implement &run, &runinstead, and &rungather.

 + Replace nam with something that doesn't use as much memory.  (Talk to
   pmurias to get his experiences.)

  *Implement junctions.  You'll need to add some slightly tricky code
   on the slow path of nominal type checks.  You will also need to fix
   the optimized builtins to use nominal type checking.  Bonus points
   if the optimizer can turn if $x == any(1,3,5) into a loop.

  *Implement multiple dispatch.

  *Create multiple numeric types with sensible overloads between them.  Add
   more numeric operators.

   Niecza is probably the ideal platform for prototyping a concurrency
   system which will whirlpool back into the synopses.

  *Parallel hyperops!  Read the Cilk papers, they seem to have a data
   parallelism model most similar to what Perl 6 needs.

   Understand the Str/Stringy distinctions, and improve stringification
   and numification handling for Any.  Develop a warning system.

  *Explicitly imprecise error reporting.  In many circumstances niecza
   doesn't actually have an exact line number; it should be able to
   report a range.

   Design something to take the place of STD's :$*endsym, probably as
   a trait of some kind.

   Design something to deal with the last remnants of cursor mutability
   in STD.pm6.

 +*"Immediate mode metamodel" - Metamodel::StaticSub object should be
   constructed by the closing brace at the latest.  This will require
   a lot of STD hacking and is required for BEGIN to work.

   Study Nil and find the correct way to integrate it into Niecza.

   Add a JVM backend.

   Add a Parrot backend.

NASTY

   A multicore job scheduler would be cool.  You'll need to talk with
   TimToady on dependency extraction; there are some subtle points with
   modules that export slangs.

  *Figure out how eval can possibly work.  Do it.

  *Figure out how BEGIN can possibly work.  Do it.

   Native type support.

   SIMD hyperoperators.

   Export Perl 6 code into a CLR .dll