...Unlike the transition from Perl 4 to Perl 5, Perl 6 wasn't intended to be a replacement for its predecessor, but rather, a new and modernized tool. Perl 5 development for the 5.6.x line ended in 2006, but 5.9.x and eventually 5.10.x continues today, though admittedly popularity has waned somewhat in the face of what has become a superior tool. New Perl learners seem to be drawn mostly to Perl 6, and for good reason. It has progressed significantly since its early quirky days. Perl 5 posts on popular websites such as PerlMonks have become far less frequent in favor of Perl 6 topics, and the main focus of the development community has shifted toward Perl 6. Amazingly, Parrot (the back end of Perl 6) has now been adopted by Python and Ruby as their foundation of choice, and probably not so coincidentally, Microsoft has begun development on a Parrot-like backside for its much anticipated .WET development tool.

In 2011, Larry pulled himself and a small team away from the p6p group to begin concentrating their bleading-edge efforts on the much anticipated Perl 7. At this point details on Perl 7 are sketchy, but those in the know seem to all light up with a knowing and smug grin whenever the project is mentioned. The development community is abuzz with the few tidbits that have been overtly discussed, and seems to look forward to the omnipresent mantra of TIMTOWTDI being combined with the next generation linguistic parser that Larry discussed in his state of the onion talk in 2009.