Two sides of the same coin I suppose.

"Can't just add this to perl because it will break things." vs "In order to add this without breaking things, you need to remove core features."

I'm not sure what you would have to apologize for... I'm pretty sure we are arguing the same thing from different perspectives.

Now I'm thinking it is like a Language of Theseus. How may core features do you swap out before it is no longer perl? ;)