It's about Perl 5. The idea is that Perl 5 (as a whole) is quite old - ancient in internet terms. Much of what you find online as Perl tutorials or introductions is hideous advice from the point of view of today's Perl idioms and possibilities. (A few random things: nearly every Perl tutorial you find is still using bareword, two-argument calls to open. Argh. Also, no Moose, no autodie, no Perlbrew, no Try::Tiny, no cpanminus and on and on and on.) Hence, a need for a "modern" introduction to contemporary Perl programming.

If you're curious about the project and the author's view more generally, you might be interested in his introductory blog post "Why 'Modern Perl' Anyway?" (it's linked in the Github repo): http://www.modernperlbooks.com/mt/2009/01/why-modern-perl.ht...