This was really good. The mix of PHP as a better solution for shared hosting (and its simplicity for beginners) and the horror story of Perl 6 were both big setbacks.
I really liked working with Modern Perl, but rarely do anymore mostly since "nobody uses Perl" kills any suggestion even when it might be the right tool for the job. Ruby has become Perl 6 for me.
Allison Randal wrote on the death of Perl a while back and had some observations worth nothing to understand how it fell: http://allisonrandal.com/2013/03/31/mythbusters-why-i-still-...
I really liked working with Modern Perl, but rarely do anymore mostly since "nobody uses Perl" kills any suggestion even when it might be the right tool for the job. Ruby has become Perl 6 for me.