I suspect a lot of people are looking to Perl 6 for answers to where Perl is headed. So to some extent, the future of Perl depends on what comes out of Perl 6, and when.
Ya know, I've heard a couple of people say thing similar to this, but I've yet to actually hear anyone say "I'm not going to learn/use/whatever perl5 because perl6 might come out someday". Most people, especially if they don't know perl5, haven't even heard of perl6. So maybe in 10 years people will be phasing out their perl5 scripts and looking for perl6 programmers, but even if perl6 never comes out, I hardly see the demand for perl5 dying out. It's still a great, useful language that's used all over the place, mostly where you'd never expect it. Or perhaps I'm just not talking to the right people.
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After all, we're all using IPv4 right.. and IPv6 is supposed to be the next big thing.
The trouble with critical mass is when it's big enough switching over becomes very, very difficult, especially when society has spent years patching something to fix known issues (such as a Boeing 747 with wiring issues, or NAT for IPv4, etc etc).
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