It’s the things we know that just ain’t so
Posting grand pronouncements about what Perl 5 has to become or the new name it absolutely must adopt won’t do anything. That’s irrelevant.
“What people manning the booths at non-Perl conferences say is the perception of Perl among those outside the echo chamber is irrelevant; I know the REAL problems Perl is having: they are the ones we think must be the reason based on our perspective from inside the echo chamber.”
If that still sounds rational to you, try a thought experiment:
“I don’t care what my profiler is telling me. That function does nothing important. I know where the REAL performance problem is, and it’s the one I’ve been thinking has to be optimised all along.”
Waxing philosophical
Indeed.
What do you see as the profiler telling us what is what? People manning the booths at non-Perl conferences? Troll articles in InfoWorld? I'm not sure that either one is an effective metric. Seems to me that everything being discussed here is based on anecdotal evidence at best, or TIOBE at worst.