Welcome Rakudo Star
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* Everyone I've encountered online who has used both Perl 5 and Perl 6 says that they like Perl 6 (the language) better.
* This first Rakudo Star release is not optimized at all, which is fine and not a surprise. Everyone by now should know that one of the golden rules is: "make it work, make right, then make it fast." Rakudo is (fwict) mostly still on the first step there.
* There are a large number of Perl 5 users who, years ago, got excited about Perl 6, and then eventually needed to get back to work with Perl 5 and subsequently went quiet on Perl 6. I think you're going to see more and more of these people getting re-interested in Perl 6.
* I keep hearing "Perl 5 isn't going anywhere". I think that's correct, however, that comment usually implies "it's not going to disappear tomorrow". I think it has a 2nd meaning, and that is: it's not going to continue to move forward very much now that Perl 6 is here.
* Perl 6 needs its own real forum. Perlmonks has a decidedly Perl 5 feel to it, and although #perl6 on irc is a friendly place, users need a regular online forum. Someone needs to just choose one, install it, pick a pretty theme, slap a Camelia logo on it, and get it running. Not a mailing list, not a google group, not irc, but an actual factual forum. It doesn't have to have karma or voting or a chatterbox right now, it just has to have a working forum.
* Go Offer Kaye! Keep those "Gentle Intro" blog posts coming. http://blogs.perl.org/users/offerkaye/2010/07/p6-gentle-intr... . Many new Perl 6 users will want to write in baby-Perl6, and little easy tutorials like these (and Szabgab's screencasts) are a great help.
Everyone I've encountered online who has used both Perl 5 and Perl 6 says that they like Perl 6 (the language) better.
My heart loves perl6 whereas my head prefers perl5 :) Fortunately the syntax and semantics between them are so close I don't think I'll ever have an issue switching between them (in fact this maybe become a good consultancy requirement, ie. job opportunity, for the future?).
re: future of perl5 - There is good momentum behind perl5 & CPAN at the moment that I doubt it will be deflected at all by perl6 for quite a while. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if perl6 draws a bigger attention from outside of the perl5 world.
I wonder what the editorial direction will be, relative to the other official Perl sites (which have improved tremendously in the last year).
The Perl 5 to 6 articles at http://perlgeek.de/en/article/5-to-6 are very helpful even if you aren't familiar with Perl 5. One thing to remember about them is that they describe Perl 6 as specified, regardless of whether any of the implementations fully support the relevant features.
The Perl 6 Advent Calendar from last Winter (http://perl6advent.wordpress.com/2009/12/01/perl-6-advent-ca...) is more of a "Here are some really cool things about Perl 6" series of articles, but they are also pretty good reads for learning the language.