I teach Perl, and always ask delegates which version of Perl they are using. About half don't know, about quarter are on 5.8 and the rest are usually 5.005 or 5.6. I have not had a single delegate using 5.10.

Why don't people upgrade? Sometimes they don't know that new releases are out there, most often they don't care.

Upgrading requires testing and parallel running - an expensive process. Will the new version give benefits or savings greater than or equal to the cost?

OK, so use the new release just for new projects. That means maintaining multiple versions of perl, which brings its own possibilities of screw-ups.

I have all the *new* 5.10 features in the course material, and hope people will use it eventually, but I won't be holding my breath. Other languages have similar issues, it will be interesting to see how long it takes for Python 3 to achieve widespread use.

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