On Tue, Oct 10, 2000 at 12:38:39PM -0700, Steve Fink wrote:
> Adam Turoff wrote:
> >
> > Message #1: Perl5 isn't going away, even after Perl6 is released.
> >
> > Proof: Perl4 is still around.
>
> Doesn't help this need. Perl4 is unsupported.
By the same token, so is 5.005_03.
Older versions of Perl are solving problems, and older versions of
Perl aren't going away. If Perl were used today as part of a five
year mission to explore new worlds and boldy go (sic) where no code
has gone before, the version of Perl on the probe is sure to be
out of date by the end of the mission. No, it won't be a supported
version of Perl, but no, the probe doesn't need to be upgraded (and
re-tested, re-verified) because someone *else* needed UTF8 support
this month.
> I think the important
> message should be that Perl5 is still supported, which is far beyond
> just "not going away". And we can say "and it still will be until Perl6
> is completely solid, post 6.0."
Yes, that is the correct message. What is unclear is how long the two
branches will be supported in parallel. Even after Perl5 is "de-supported"
N years down the road, it will still be useful for getting the job done.
That's the bit I wanted to stress.
Z.
