As I understand it, Perl 6 is essentially a complete language overhaul. However, the sequential numbering implies an iteration. To me, that's unintuitive.
At the risk of over-analogizing, it's a bit as if Scala had been released as Java (n). Totally, completely irrational? Maybe not. Confusing? Almost certainly.
> Confusing? Almost certainly.
Agreed. I don't know if it would've been better for Perl6 to not have 'Perl' in its name, but it almost surely would have been better for Perl5 if Perl6 hadn't had 'Perl' in its name.
This is a bit pedantic, but I think a better analogy might be Dutch and German - similar roots, but where fluency in one doesn't confer fluency in the other.
Granted, I haven't touched Perl 6 so the magnitude of difference I'm estimating is based off of a very superficial impression.
Python 2 & 3 might be somewhat akin to American & British English.
> It almost surely would have been better for Perl5 if Perl6 hadn't had 'Perl' in its name
Agreed. From a distance, there's definitely the sense that Perl5 was sacrificed for the benefit of Perl6.
At this point I think most programmers are at least slightly aware of the 5/6 debacle and I feel that both languages actually benefit from it! It makes people think about versioning, sisterhood, and syntax! Which are all important things for programmers to think about. But really, everyone's got an opinion on the matter and that's kind of what makes it so great.