[HelloNurse]

Users do not "want to keep getting new features"; they occasionally decide to make an effort to upgrade the Perl interpreters on their servers and personal machines because they want some new features.

A "use v5.36" directive is going to be very opaque for many users, but it doesn't need to be understood to serve the purpose of determining the minimum Perl version to install in order to run a certain script very effectively.

[codeflo]

If user = server administrator writing simple scripts, you are probably right. If user = a team of devs, I don’t agree. You often want to use new language features just to simplify a piece of code, and you don’t want confusing rules around when you can and can’t use them.

[HelloNurse]

What confusing rules? Given the promise of perennial backwards compatibility, the rule that if you want to use a feature you have to upgrade to the appropriate Perl version isn't confusing.

Neither is keeping development environment up to date and letting Perl versions on servers lapse until you install the latest Perl version because you have new Perl scripts requiring new features, or there are urgent security fixes, or you are building a new server or container anyway.

[cestith]

You can't use the new feature without editing code to use the new feature. If you're editing code, bumping the version number at the top is trivial.