Actually I remember reading somewhere that when Perl 6 was just getting started, it motivated a number of Perl 5 devs to hunker down and improve Perl 5.  Almost in opposition to the new somewhat-alien syntax of Perl 6.<p>At this point I think most programmers are at least slightly aware of the 5&#x2F;6 debacle and I feel that both languages actually <i>benefit</i> from it! It makes people think about versioning, sisterhood, and syntax! Which are all important things for programmers to think about.  But really, everyone&#x27;s got an opinion on the matter and that&#x27;s kind of what makes it so great.