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I agree. All of what you said, along with an ambiguous release date for 6, with the caveat that it always seemed like it was just around the corner, made me back off digging really deep into 5 thinking 6 was just constantly a few months away.

After 3 or 4 years of crying wolf, I and the rest of the industry simply moved on.

When 6 finally started coming out, the complex release mechanism and the difficulty in firing up a fresh install of *-nix and typing "perl" really left a bad taste in my mouth.

Lots of that has finally cleaned up, but Perl6 is not a default package in any OS yet, and there's still years of performance improvements yet to do before it's really production ready.

I think the very fast progress of Go has also made me rethink spending time with Perl 6 and instead thinking of taking some time to get familiar with Go.

(I say all this as a very huge Perl fan who's solved some very hard problems in the past with Perl and had it help me make a successful career out of being able to solve those kinds of problems without lots of fuss).

Many people will attribute the "6" in "Perl 6" as the cause, but I attribute it to the "Perl" in "Perl 6". Perl 6 appears to be a sufficiently enough different language from Perl 5, much more than the apparent difference between Perl 4 and Perl 5, that it should have had a different name, not just a different version number, out of the gate. Or maybe Perl 6 changed too much, too soon to just be a single increment in the version number. The object model, the runtime, the syntax, more things were explicitly operators (I never really cared that .. was an operator in perl 5, but perl 6 seemed to make such a big deal about operators that now it seemed like you had to be concern much more with precedence, for example), more operators, more symbol/punctuation use, different idioms, a language agnostic interpreter. Compare the python 2 to python 3 transition/marketing. Calling it "Python 3000", even as just a nickname, early on may have helped indicate that it was a major change. Tools like 2to3 end up producing code that is still easily recognizable as python, because the idioms are not wildly different. People will be able to call themselves "python programmers" independent of their experience with either version. But it's still not a smooth transition and people are still asking "which version of python should I start with", but the answers are less dire than with perl.

The ambitiousness of perl 6 really warranted a different name for the language, and more explicit breaking ties with Perl's established and productioned legacy. This would have helped both projects I think. Even working on (vs in) perl 5 is somewhat considered a dead end, because it has perl 6 looming over it. It ends up doing a disservice to the livelihood of both projects.

I had a long winded reply but it got lost and I don't feel like rewriting it. Too long won't rewrite version: Perl6 was conceived in 2000, it still doesn't exist in 2013. For a number of reasons involving competing languages, cloud computing, and the end of the Mhz race, it's very tough to imagine Perl6 as anything other than a dead end.

Saying that it doesn't exist in 2013 is either disingenuous or ignorant. You can make any number of arguments as to its relevance, or whether it has achieved certain goals and milestones, but its existence is not in question.

It is very actively developed. Some (small group of) people use it every day. Some (very, very small group of) people even use it in small portions of their business.

I'll concede that. I meant it more in the way people say "Rust doesn't exist." Yes there is software that actively runs, but by no means are either generally considered ready for "production".

My main issue though is that static languages are improving to the point where I start to wonder about the relevance of any dynamic language.

My main issue though is that static languages are improving to the point where I start to wonder about the relevance of any dynamic language.

IMO static typing can be cumbersome for exploratory programming. That said, I really like the added benefits it can impart. I think an optionally typed language may be the best of both worlds, but my experience with them is minimal.

I like type inferencing, like in Haskell. You gain the benefits of static typing, but you do not have to explicitly write the types all over the place. I find that the exploratory phase goes more quickly with the compiler there to provide a sanity check.

I was once one of the most prolific authors on CPAN, and this, along with my answer above about lack of performance, drove me away.

Perl(5) just needed classes and clean up a few bits of historic cruft (like the need to end modules in "1;", indirect object syntax, etc) and it could have been an awesome language. Perl6 decided to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Ah, that old chestnut again. The argument falls down when we see what really happened: Perl 6 had and continues to have a huge positive influence on Perl 5, the future belongs to both as there turned out to be no discontinuous move, and Perl 5 stays up-to-date.

I'm sure there are people who see it that way; I can only speak for myself and for every other Perl developer I ever worked with.

Even if it is only the way things are perceived, and not the actual truth - it can still explain the decay of the community.

What decay? The Perl community still continues to grow - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6738619

It doesn't really matter if it turned out not to be discontinuous. The fact that it looked like it was going to be for a long, long time is still a big problem.