&gt; the contextually nonsense word &#x27;what&#x27;.<p>I don&#x27;t buy that it&#x27;s contextually nonsense. I suspect you had a bad reaction to it and have gotten caught up in that initial reaction. I could be wrong about that but your stated perspective is noticeably extreme and unique about a relatively tiny point.<p>&gt; if you&#x27;re being very generous it means &quot;What is 3?&quot; (asking for its value).<p>I don&#x27;t think that&#x27;s being especially generous. But yes, please be generous. :)<p>I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s asking for its value.<p>What is Belgium? (Country)
What is HN? (Time Sink)
What is `4 -3i` ? (Complex Number).
What is $age? (Int)<p>If you want a value you just write something like:<p><pre><code>    say 3;    # 3
    say $age; # 55
</code></pre>
&gt; You asked what I would suggest?<p>Well I intended my comment for epidemian, but OK. :)<p>&gt; If you want to be really cute<p>Perl 6 explicitly incorporates fun but also explicitly avoids &quot;you think that&#x27;s cute today&quot; mistakes.<p>I like the choice of names for the pseudo method mop macros: what, which, where, who, why, how, etc. But that&#x27;s partly because: I find them easy to remember as a group; I found them easy to understand once I&#x27;d encountered them once; and I&#x27;ve not seen anyone react negatively to any of them the way you have.<p>----<p>Anyhoo, I hope you won&#x27;t let your dislike for the rarely used .WHAT et al to unduly color your view of Perl 6. I don&#x27;t expect the tutorial that&#x27;s the topic of this HN to impress anyone but that&#x27;s because it deliberately sticks to absolute basics. Instead, I urge you to wait until next year, and then take another look; I think you&#x27;ll see there&#x27;s a lot to like.