Like the modern Perl testing culture? Thank Perl 6.

Are you suggesting we wouldn't have the "modern testing culture" if there hadn't been a Perl6? Are we to believe that testing, which started with version 1.0.0 and which continued to evolve ever since, would have stopped developing in 2000?

Man, you sound like those people claiming the race to the moon was worthwhile because it gave us Velcro and a pen to write upside down with. As if we wouldn't have had Velcro or something similar otherwise. Or that didn't pencils allow us the write upside down for a long time already.

I'm not denying Perl has borrowed from Perl6. Just as it has been borrowing from other languages since its birth. But without Perl6, Perl would have borrowed elsewhere. Or the ideas first raised on a Perl6 mailinglist would have raised somewhere else in the Perl world and found its way into Perl.

Would Perl be where it's now (5.12.1) without Perl6? Unlikely. Would it have progressed equally well the past decade without Perl6?^† I believe that to be likely. Would it have progressed even more if some of the resources now spend on Perl6 had been spend in Perl? Seems logical to me.

†For instance, Perl may have had a switch statement, and/or a smart match operator, if there hadn't been Perl6. It may not have been called given/when, and smart match is likely to have worked differently.