I don't think it'd be instantly super-popular if it were a standalone, non-Perl-affiliated language, but I think it'd at least be talked about like Elixir or F# or Elm.
I always felt Perl <6 was the papa of Ruby: optimizing for (a) programmer's happiness. Perl showed the way in so many ways, combined with the object model of SmallTalk we got Ruby.
Maybe P6 also has a some new ideas in that find their use in future languages. But we will only know after P6 gets used and loved and exposed to real world scenarios, what those "most valuable/copyable innovations" are...
Is that really a thing that couldn’t just be added to PCRE and be available in any language with bindings?
F# has the advantage of easy interoperability with the vast .NET ecosystem.
Here's your perennial reminder that the word "modern" is a thought smell.
> it's a language with a small ecosystem that doesn't seem to provide any groundbreaking advantage compared to existing languages
I'd almost prefer this conception went uncorrected, because Perl6 is not just Ruby or Python in different clothes, and it's not just Perl5 with nicer aesthetics, and I don't mind enjoying niches or competitive advantages.
Sometimes it's a thought smell, but sometimes it's shorthand for "has learned the lessons of recent history", which is indeed valuable.
By analogy, "modern" might indeed sometimes mean "has learned the lessons of recent history."
One can even sometimes test this by asking people what they mean by "modern."
My experience is that they usually don't know, or have a conception uncomfortably close to "it was released more recently" or "it's more like what everybody does right now," which are both certainly worth observing... but stopping there is where the thinking becomes distinctly less so.
Not familiar with the term and can't find it elsewhere.
"this smells off" -> nonspecific indication that something might be wrong "code smell" -> nonspecific indication that something might be wrong with software code "thought smell" -> nonspecific indication that something might be wrong with a way of thinking
Ignoring the Perl angle, it's a language with a small ecosystem that doesn't seem to provide any groundbreaking advantage compared to existing languages, so no reason to adopt it.
In general, to become popular a new language needs to provide one of those:
1. A new groundbreaking and useful paradigm that cannot be added to existing popular language ecosystems without a total compatibility break (e.g. Rust)
2. Compatibility with an existing ecosystem and significant improvements (e.g. Kotlin)
3. Being the best among languages required by a platform or program (e.g. Swift, also JavaScript when introduced)
4. Have one of the best ecosystems for a specific niche (e.g. Ruby when Rails got popular)