Re: Backward Compatibility (was Re: List for Perl 6 syntax?)

> My immediate reaction to this was "Interesting idea, but what about
> Perl 5 compatibility?".    Which lead to the question "To what extent
> is Perl 5 compatibility a constraint on Perl 6?".

One of the decisions that was made right at the very start was that
we *would* break compatability with Perl 5, if only because there were 
some ugly legacy features that had to go.  

As Larry said: 

  "You can't make an omelette without breaking some... things"

Larry has also said that he will consider all and any changes to 
the language (but maybe not for very long).  Nothing is sacred in
theory.

Nevertheless, we all have a vested interest in breaking as little 
existing code as possible, and we certainly don't want to scare off
all the existing Perl programmers by giving them something that 
looks like Java or Python.  I'm sure these thoughts are prevalent
in Larry's mind, as well as the rest of us.  I imagine that proposals
that tie in closely with existing Perl syntax and features are more 
likely to receive close scrutiny than wild off-the-wall proposals.


A