I kept out of this but I don’t feel a broad enough picture is emerging so…

Perl 1 test suite due to mandating strict and dropping bareword filehandles. Does that matter? I guess not, but it feels like a loss to me.

That is an indefensible conclusion in my view and a good index point for why the Perl 7 move seems right: the objections are ultimately unmoving. I’ve been doing Perl for 22 years now and I’ve never once had to, directly, deal with Perl 4 let alone Perl 1. WRT strict and such… I only care about the command line. I expect it will remain or have a flag to remain, strict free.

Perl isn’t dead because there is too much of it out there and it has a large core of devotees but it has been on its sickbed since soon after I started using it and the Renaissance c 2005 is running on fumes.

Perl 6 was radical and a huge departure and exactly the right thing to do at the time. It was too ambitious though; and more importantly, it was opened up to too wide a design committee which is, thankfully, not happening with Perl 7. Perl 7 isn’t anywhere as radical but it also isn’t too ambitious. This feels like the sweet spot to me. Though it’s probably 10+ years too late; and even with a dedicated core willing and able to move Perl forward, riders are dragging their feet because it might mean…? They have to stick with 5 and won’t get new Unicode stuff? It won’t be a default install on *nix…? It’s already halfway to that as it stands.

Maybe it will all blow up. In an industry where winners and losers are chosen in a year or two, something has to change for Perl to cease shrinking; to gain significant new users, to get past its unearned lousy reputation, and to make devs interested in writing tools and apps against modern technology and needs. I’m not the one to change it but I am going to stay out of the way of the change and I encourage everyone to consider their own best utility in the equation. Something has to change.