$ time perl -E 'say "hello world"' hello world real 0m0.016s user 0m0.005s sys 0m0.007s $ time perl6 -e 'say "hello world"' hello world real 0m0.187s user 0m

$ time perl -E 'say "hello world"' hello world real 0m0.016s user 0m0.005s sys 0m0.007s $ time perl6 -e 'say "hello world"' hello world real 0m0.187s user 0m0.226s sys 0m0.032s That is not 100x slower, 10x sure. But once its running its faster than Perl 5 in plenty of situations especially for things like heavy OO use or compact numeric work in tight loops. Anyone who argues Perl 6 is fast is definitely being disingenuous but the counter is almost certainly more annoying to come across simply because "startup time" is only important if you expect your program to execute in less than a tenth of a second. So tight loops in a shell script for something simple, stick to Perl 5. Large web app that will be running for the next 5 years who cares about 10x slower startup time? Hardly a benchmark thats useful.