It's quite possible that Larry agrees with you. I've never heard him suggest that it was a mistake to build on Perl 4 to get to Perl 5. Which implies that he c

It's quite possible that Larry agrees with you. I've never heard him suggest that it was a mistake to build on Perl 4 to get to Perl 5. Which implies that he considered it worth A) continuing to evolve Perl and B) building directly on the language design and implementation of Perl 4. But aiui, when the mug smashed in 2000, he quite literally instantly seized on the notion of more or less starting over in regard to language design, compiler implementation (and, very importantly, the cultural vibe), for Perl 6.