&gt; This is the same issue facing Perl (although the Perl situation seems more dire) WRT Perl 5 vs Perl 6.<p>The situation with Perl is neither more dire nor really the same issue as with Python.  Perl 5 is not going away.  Perl 6 maintainers are not the same people as Perl 5 Porters -- both will be maintained for the foreseeable future.<p>Second, Perl 6 is a significant change to Perl, with far more features and somewhat different syntax.  People will want to change for the features.  Running Perl 5 code from inside Perl 6 works by calling out to libperl, which runs a real version of Perl 5.  Perl 5 will still be popular due to ubiquity, access to CPAN modules, and things like CPAN Testers.<p>So it&#x27;s a choice for the developer, to develop in a new language that just happens to be Perl-flavored, or to go with any other language.  Not really a crisis.