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Think of Perl5 and Perl6 as American English and British English. Both languages are English, but essentially they are different languages but with a similar fo
by eCa 11y ago
Think of Perl5 and Perl6 as American English and British English. Both languages are English, but essentially they are different languages but with a similar foundation.
> Confusing? Almost certainly.
Agreed. I don't know if it would've been better for Perl6 to not have 'Perl' in its name, but it almost surely would have been better for Perl5 if Perl6 hadn't had 'Perl' in its name.
- doktrin 11y ago> Think of Perl5 and Perl6 as American English and British English This is a bit pedantic, but I think a better analogy might be Dutch and German - similar roots, but where fluency in one doesn't confer fluency in the other. Granted, I haven't touched Perl 6 so the magnitude of difference I'm estimating is based off of a very superficial impression. Python 2 & 3 might be somewhat akin to American & British English. > It almost surely would have been better for Perl5 if Perl6 hadn't had 'Perl' in its name Agreed. From a distance, there's definitely the sense that Perl5 was sacrificed for the benefit of Perl6.
- MadcapJake 11y agoActually I remember reading somewhere that when Perl 6 was just getting started, it motivated a number of Perl 5 devs to hunker down and improve Perl 5. Almost in opposition to the new somewhat-alien syntax of Perl 6. At this point I think most programmers are at least slightly aware of the 5/6 debacle and I feel that both languages actually benefit from it! It makes people think about versioning, sisterhood, and syntax! Which are all important things for programmers to think about. But really, everyone's got an opinion on the matter and that's kind of what makes it so great.