I agree empathically. "If you build it, they will come", Where "it" eq the possibility of writing optimisable Perl code, "they" eq optimisable Perl code.

IMO we are better off with the efforts of RPerl (et cetera Perl11/JIT whatever), even if it's just experimental right now, even if it turns out not to be practical or workable. Just opening up the discussion and getting people to think oriented towards the future is valuable.