[gwd]

> Everyone I talked to at the time who worked with Perl knew it would not go away

But what about people who didn't work with Perl, or only used it as a side thing? I know I personally put off deepening my superficial knowledge of Perl 5 in the early 2000's, in anticipation of "Perl 6". The Osbourne Effect is a real thing.

EDIT Or, companies starting major new projects, and deciding what language to write it in? It's one thing to say, "Perl 5 will be supported for a long time, we don't need to migrate our existing projects off it." It's another thing to say, "We want to start a new project; should we start it in Perl 5, which will become 'legacy' in a year or two when Perl 6 comes out? Or should we write it in Python?"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect