Just a note, that the idiom, "bird in the hand" is a statement that one should value that which they already possess over that which they do not yet possess, even if the latter is ostensibly worth more than the former.

The full proverb is "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." I recognize that you didn't quote this directly.

I am not sure if you meant to invert the common meaning here. The thrust of your post reads as if favoring this new direction for Perl, on the basis that it will bring in new users. The "bird in the hand" proverb would counsel the opposite - favoring stability to cater to current users, regardless of the impact on potential new users.

I'm not inverting the meaning. I used that idiom precisely because it conveys the meaning that going after the two in the bush can leave you empty handed. I think this is a terrible idea and that antagonizing your existing users on the hope that new users will start using perl is going to kill your community, and I hope that the real reason for the decisions made around Perl7 are not actually to attract new users by compromising what the existing user base cares about. The post wasn't supposed to read as if it favors the new direction - sorry if that wasn't clear, it was supposed to convey the exact opposite through the use of the bird in the hand idiom and dismissing the birds in the bush as a mere hope that they'll get a rush of new users.

Gotcha. That's my misreading, and I apologize for that.

I don’t actually think that’s what it means. I thought it meant when you have two birds you can go after, if you go after both you may catch neither, but if you go after just one it’s better than having caught none.

It means you already have caught one bird (the one in your hand), and that’s more valuable than giving that one up for the chance to try for two that you have a low risk of catching (the two in the bush) because you have to release the one in your hand if you want to try for the two on the bushes.

The proverb is "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." It posits a scenario with three birds, one held in the hand, and two free in the bush. We can assume all bird have the same intrinsic value. If each bird has the same intrinsic value, the only way one can be worth more than two is from a subjective perspective. From the perspective of the bird-holder (who is defined to hold one bird), that bird in hand is worth more than the two free birds.

The reason for this is that the bird in hand is certain. The value to the bird-holder of the free birds must be discounted based on some probability that the bird-holder may capture these birds.

The implication is that to go bird-hunting, one requires two hands. In order to attempt to capture the two birds in the bush, one must first relinquish the single held bird. Bird hunting has some probability of failure. If you hunt for the two birds in the bush (by first letting go of the bird you have), you may end the day with no birds to your name, a position that is leaves you worse off than if you had simply held your bird in hand.

In the case of Perl and its userbase, the bird in hand consists of existing users who value stability and portability (per the article). The birds in the bush comprise current Perl non-users. There are more current Perl non-users than users. Pursuing current non-users by means that alienate current users may leave the language with fewer total users if there are simultaneously

1. A low rate of non-user to user conversion

2.And a high rate of user to non-user conversion.

Several references for the proverb, usage, and origins:

https://writingexplained.org/idiom-dictionary/bird-in-the-ha...

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/a_bird_in_the_hand_is_worth_t...

https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/a-bird-in-the-hand.html

https://grammarist.com/proverb/a-bird-in-the-hand-is-worth-t...

It's interesting that the number of birds change a lot from language to language.

In Spanish, the proverb is "A bird in the hand is worth more than a hundred flying." and according to https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https... it comes from a Latin proverb that is "A bird in the right hand is better than four out (of it)."

And the Swedish version I've heard compares one in the hand against ten in the woods!

Also, even if you can catch the two birds for certain, it might not be worth it. For example, it could require more than one birds worth of calories to catch two birds, so the bird in hand that costs zero calories is the strictly superior option.

The generally accepted meaning is that already having something (the bird in hand) is worth more than chasing after things that you don't have (the birds in the bush). So in this case, the idea is that customers you've already acquired are worth more than a larger, untapped market. The poster has flipped this accepted meaning to suggest that Perl should chase after new users, rather than focusing on keeping existing users happy.

> be a bit antagonistic to your existing user base and make up on the hope that you'll get a new rush of users to make up for it.

I think this is exactly it, and I also think it's the right thing to do. The antagonism to existing users (that don't want to change versions) is minimal. To them, it's just that Perl won't release anymore after a while, but there will be third parties to step in and offer support. I'm sure ActiveState is very interested in Perl 5 right now.

All this is is a recognition that Perl has been in maintenance support mode for years now, and providing a clean and clearly defined way for people that are interested in changes to opt in to them.

As a community, I think this is clearly the correct choice. The (current) nature of programming language communities and new user means that a large percentage of new users comes into programming each year. For a community as small as Perl, if you can increase the amount of those people that are coming to your community even minimally, it will probably dwarf the existing community fairly shortly, and that's needed if it's to survive at all.

I do and have developed Perl as either my main or one of my main responsibilities in by job for over two decades now. Perl 7 won't change how we do anything at work for years, if ever, since we have decades of Perl code to maintain and extend. I still am extremely happy about Perl 7 because it's the first time I've been excited about a Perl development in quite a while, and because I can't see any negatives for our existing code.

> I think the reason is probably what you mentioned - very few people are starting large Perl projects nowadays.

And that won't change unless Perl is allowed to change.

And how many people are going to start new perl projects after all existing codebases get broken? Especially considering their "values" now include breaking your code all the time.

Nobody is going to hail perl 8 as the hot new thing, the only thing that will happen is this move killing perl off entirely.

As far as I can tell, the changes being made are relatively easy to absorb. Either the right way, or by using a pragma/directive.

Nothing there looks as drastic as the big changes from python 2 to 3, for example.