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A comment I just posted on /r/perl defending my decision to increase the minimum supported #perl version to 5.20 on a lot of my #CPAN modules.

reddit.com/r/perl/comments/1qw…

in reply to Paul Evans

I always boggle at the kind of people who get angry that new versions of software doesn't support ancient versions of the underlying stack (whether it's the language interpeter/compiler or OS).

I get that it's easier to upgrade things higher up the stack, but at some point you need to bite the bullet and upgrade things lower down.

in reply to ilmari

@ilmari Yeah.
Specifically as a person who is adding features in to new versions of Perl, it annoys me that some people don't ever seem to want to use those. If you're going to be stuck on 5.14 / 10 / 8 for ever, why do I bother to create these new things?
in reply to Paul Evans

Especially because Perl has such a strong backwards-compatibility ethos: it's very low risk to upgrade to a new version of Perl.
in reply to Paul Evans

great reply. Your work is held in high regard and is very much appreciated!