Vincent: Perl 5.16 and Beyond [LWN.net]

Vincent: Perl 5.16 and Beyond

Posted Sep 13, 2011 14:19 UTC (Tue) by imgx64 (guest, #78590)
Parent article: Vincent: Perl 5.16 and Beyond

Probably a silly question, but why is Perl 5.x getting backwards-incompatible changes? I thought this was the purpose of Perl 6.

Vincent: Perl 5.16 and Beyond

Posted Sep 13, 2011 15:39 UTC (Tue) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (2 responses)

Because Perl 5 is what everybody actually uses. It's what needs to evolve to stay relevant.

To paraphrase the original article: "Perl 6 is. Well, it is many things. Useful, fast, stable (in the API-stability sense) and a viable replacement for Perl 5 are four things it is not."

Vincent: Perl 5.16 and Beyond

Posted Sep 13, 2011 16:21 UTC (Tue) by b7j0c (guest, #27559) [Link] (1 responses)

right. perl6 will be all of those things at some point, or not. i'm not worried. if all perl6 accomplishes is to inform perl5 of cool new features, then i consider it a success.

Vincent: Perl 5.16 and Beyond

Posted Sep 13, 2011 18:22 UTC (Tue) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

I was worried about Perl 6 in the past because I thought it would suck developer time away from Perl 5 and lead the Perl community down a dead-end. I am no longer worried now that I see the excellent work still being done by the Perl 5 community.

I'm confident that Perl 5 will continue to thrive and be developed by excellent people like Jesse Vincent. As for Perl 6's future, I believe it's as bright as PHP 6's future, but that's just my opinion... we'll have to wait and see.