I'm curious why you don't seem to see Ponie as that
Perl5/Perl6 bridge you seem to allude to. Or is it just that
you fear that Perl6 will stop things from progressing down
the Perl5 path? I am a 5 year Perl programmer and also have
some concerns about total abandonment of Perl5, since we have
a significant Perl5 code base. But the reality I see is a bit
different (perhaps tainted by similar large rewrite
experiences in other software areas). I see Perl6 as having to start anew to
offer the big changes seen as necessary by the Perl community. I
don't see it being widely used for a while, which would
mean that the community would do what we'd expect and
provide suitable bridges and migration paths. I also see
that the move on all fronts towards VM run-time environments
means that as we move towards Perl6, another change is
taking place that makes the actual languages
you use and mix in a given environment start to become less
important. In the end, I'm not sure the migration scenario
ends up all that different from what you lay out, except for
the fact that it starts with two distinct entities, rather
than starting with the idea of building on one. There are
previous models for this sort of approach that prove it can
work and migration can be less painful than it seems when
that first divide is presented.
I'd be interested to hear you elaborate on your thoughts
here. At the rate offshoring is going I might be lucky to
be programming in any language in 2-3 years. ;-)