> Perl 5 and 6 are still tied together as if they are the same language P5 and P6 have been explicitly different languages since day one[1]. As Larry Wall said

> Perl 5 and 6 are still tied together as if they are the same language P5 and P6 have been explicitly different languages since day one[1]. As Larry Wall said, "We had to make almost everything [in Perl 5] ... backward compatible [with previous Perls] ... But now it’s the first chance to [break bug-for-bug syntactic and semantic compatibility] and ... I think we should [take the chance]." > There’s no compatibility between the two. None? With an appropriately compiled perl 5 binary installed one can install regular Perl 5 modules from CPAN and use them as if they were Perl 6 modules: use Some:Perl5::Module:from<Perl5> ; How is this not compatible? > You can’t write a library that works in both versions Even the large complex Perl 5 package Catalyst works in both Perl 5 and Perl 6 per the above. > so you lose CPAN and the thousands of packages that make Perl so powerful Per the above, the majority of CPAN just works 100% correctly out of the box. > If Perl 6 wanted backwards compatibility, they needed to have thought about it a long time ago. P6ers thought about backward compatibility with Perl 5 from day one[1]. [1] https://www.perl.com/pub/2000/10/23/soto2000.html/ https://www.perl.com/pub/2000/10/23/soto2000.html/