Not quite so miraculous as Java maintaining its lead position in the software industry. At least Perl has always been able to handle a regex without adding backslashes to everything.

Care to elaborate what is 'wacky ass' in Perl 6?

Perl 6 is pretty "wacky ass" throughout. The crazy blending of object orientation and functional programming, the twigils, the built-in support for PEGs, the scoping rules, the operators, lots of things.

I like it, though. Perl 6 is a fun language in which to program, and it's therefore one I like trying to use, even if said use is less than practical.

The article is about Perl6, not Perl5. The history may be old but the language is a complete rewrite from scratch.

This is a good point. Whilst it might be just about defensible to describe Perl 5 as a wacky ass language that people still use, Perl 6 is different - it's a wacky ass language that nobody uses yet.