I have experienced the decline in interest in Perl firsthand - having teached a class in Practical Perl Programming for 10 years at a local major university. First years saw 270ppl, second 150, then 100, 80, 50, and I think the last issue was 12 people.

I can speculate a lot about what killed Perl, or at least what called the schism, and in general what was the cause of the schism had roots in what Perl failed to innovate on. The cultural stuff was a side-effect of it.

But then also - Perl has huuuge impact on so many other languages, including JavaScript, that its place in the hall of fame cannot ever be disputed.