pop @array is just as legal in Perl 6 as it is in Perl 5. TIMTOWTDI, remember?

If you have ever taught Perl 5 to a group of newbies, than you will have know that sigil variance is one of the hardest things to explain. In Perl 6 you should consider the sigils (and the twigils) as part of the name. That makes it also much easier to explain indexing on sigilless variables (yes, Perl 6 haz them)!

Wrt "haters writing a new language": I was not aware that Perl 6 was written by Python devs :-)

Wrt "Warts": Even a rock star programmer has code that they've written in the past that they would now do differently. Larry is no different.

Wrt "Too bad": Looking back on what might have been, will not help us in the future. Perl 5 will not go away. Perl 6 won't go away either. They are both the result of a Perl mindset.