zlacker

>>todsac+(OP)
Perl 5's non-breaking conservatism kept old scripts running forever, but it also meant there was never a clear migration path the way Python 3 eventually provided, and that made long term planning a lot harder.

>>Emen15+U8
Perl did have `use strict`, so there was at least some plausible path to making non-breaking changes under a new pragma.

The OP’s theory that Perl 6’s radicalism allowed Perl 5 to be conservative sounds right to me.