The syntax is even more complex and harder to learn, than the syntax of Perl 5, so it has to offer something worthy of an effort. Even worse, it has to compete

The syntax is even more complex and harder to learn, than the syntax of Perl 5, so it has to offer something worthy of an effort. Even worse, it has to compete with non-scripting languages, limiting its usage to pretty much just I/O bound tasks. If you think about it the only one among new scripting languages that offers something over competition is Elixir, because of the actor model. And it's getting traction.