> I really, really like that I can, more often than not, take a program I wrote decades ago and it will still run properly.
That wouldn't have changed with Perl 7, because Perl 5 would have been put into "long term maintenance mode". In fact, backward compatibility would have been even stronger, because all the changes would have gone into Perl 7.
That depends on "which version" of "Perl 7" you're saying, as IIRC there were various "factions" that had varying ideas about what ought to happen when "perl7" runs programs that didn't specify a "use v..." or that specified a specific "5.something" version.
I'm personally of the idea that enough backwards compatibility _should_ be preserved, but not _so_ much as to inhibit new/better syntax constructs and the like.
But honestly it's the sort of thing that is more like "I'll know it when I see it" more than anything.
Re "long term maintenance mode", there's the not so small matter of how many people can, in fact, actually develop perl. The codebase is large and full of many traps. It's a difficult, but not impossible, codebase to contribute to.
My sincere hope is that enough things will get out of "experimental", including quite a bit more of the "class" feature, for the end result to be enough to be called "7" and we'll go from there.
Basically... mostly a marketing thing, as today's 5.40 is way, way different (and better in so many respects) than 5.8 or 5.20 or even 5.32... but the (minor) version number doesn't show that.
> Re "long term maintenance mode", there's the not so small matter of how many people can, in fact, actually develop perl. The codebase is large and full of many traps. It's a difficult, but not impossible, codebase to contribute to.
Yeah, and that was one of the main reasons cited when they announced Perl 6, back in 2000. 24 years have passed and it's still an issue.
That wouldn't have changed with Perl 7, because Perl 5 would have been put into "long term maintenance mode". In fact, backward compatibility would have been even stronger, because all the changes would have gone into Perl 7.