Disagree completely, on every point; with the possible exception of semantic scalar/array/hash sigils. There is nothing at all stopping Perl 5 from success today except a lack of applications; and general inability to compile or deploy directly to mobile. Plenty of us are completely happy with Perl 5 as it stands.

The blocking issue is the world wants applications, not programming languages. If no one had stepped up to do Catalyst, DBIC/Rose, Moose, Plack, a handful of the better ::Tiny modules, Unicode, and date handling and all the fantastic ecology those things enabled and inspired then Perl would already be completely dead as a professional greenfield language.

Armchair project managers are worse than armchair quarterbacks. At least the armchair quarterback usually knows something about the game and its rules.