Should a newcomer to Perl learn both Perl 5 and 6?

Posted by M. Joanis on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by M. Joanis
Published on 2010-12-16T23:26:28Z Indexed on 2011/01/01 13:59 UTC
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Hello!

I have started playing around with Perl 5 lately, and it seems very interesting. I would like to spend some time learning it more in depth when I can.

My question, since Perl 6 is slowly taking place (I believe...) and is said to break backward compatibility, is this: am I better learning Perl 5 and then Perl 6, or is learning Perl 6 directly a better time investment according to you?

If the changes from Perl 5 to 6 are making it hard to understand Perl 5, I should certainly start with Perl 5 to be able to read "old" scripts, then check Perl 6. There is also the "Perl 6 is not yet completely released" problem. I know there's an early adopter implementation for Perl 6, but if Perl 6 isn't officially released before some more years, I'll stick to 5 for now.

I would certainly like some insight on this. Feel free to discuss related stuff. My interest in scripting languages is fairly new.

Thanks!

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