Should We Change?

• Many important people in the Perl community say: No!

• WARNING! What follows may be exaggerated for rhetorical effect!

• Perl is not like other programming languages

  • It's also a (Unix) command-line utility, like sed or awk

• Perl has always promised extensive backwards compatibility

  • A change in default behavior would reneg on this promise

• Stability above all else!

• Prioritize existing code and existing users over new code and new users

• Otherwise ... "Major Reputational Damage!"