The Perl programming language is currently enjoying a resurgence in popularity, and for good reason! Perl 5 development continues to move forward with new features being introduced and many old ones improved, meanwhile the development of Perl 6 is making significant progress and has reached a major milestone, the details of which will be announced by Larry Wall at this very conference. For many years now the development of these sister languages have affected and influenced one another in a myriad of ways. Over the last few years I have been working on a design proposal for enhancing and extending the object system of Perl 5 which borrows a number of elements from the Perl 6 object system. In this talk we will explore the various evolutionary stages of that work, as well as discuss the complexities of adding new features to such a mature and well established language like Perl 5. Along the way we will also examine the various meanings of "legacy" in each context and show how it informed the design decisions that were made.
Speakers: Stevan Little