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Breaking backwards compatibility is a sure way to kill off a language / alienate a user base. That's a big reason why c++, Linux, PHP, etc. still exist and are used today.

Python 3 seems hellbent on taking the Perl 6 approach. How's that working out? Languages should evolve, not break off into new species.

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You're either misunderstanding Python 3 or misunderstanding Perl 6.

Python 3 was a few breaking changes made to Python 2.

Perl 6 was a completely new language, designed from scratch, with little in common with Perl 5 aside from bits of syntax. It still doesn't have a "complete" release, in 14 years. In half that time, we've had a Python 3.0 and four more point releases.

Potato, tomato. It broke backwards compatibility.

Barely. The subset of code that works in both Python 2.6+ and 3.3+ is orders of magnitude greater than the subset of code that works in both Perl 5 and 6.

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