I’m amused reading masak and mst take stock of the Perl 5 vs. Perl 6 issue/debate/brouhaha/whatever. I think mst gets it slightly closer to right (thanks to his refreshing directness), but both miss what I think is an obvious analogy:
**Perl 6 is to Perl 5 as C++ is to C
**
Mostly familiar syntax? Check. Easy to move from one to the other and back again? Check. C++ didn’t turn out to be the successor to C any more than I think Perl 6 is the successor to Perl 5.
If Larry had just called it Perl 5++, everyone would have gotten the joke up front and the whole successor meme would never have gotten in the way of things.