Quick answer: there's a usable alpha, ready to download and use right now.
Longer answer:
Perl 6 is a language specification. There is an implementation of it called Rakudo, and a distribution of Rakudo called Rakudo Star.
Rakudo Star feels a lot like an alpha of Perl 6. You can compile programs written in Perl 6, use modules written in Perl 6 (a selection of which are bundled with it), and you can do that today.
If you're a Perl 5 user, you might be asking: "Can [the implementation of Perl 6 called
Rakudo Star] do everything that /usr/bin/perl5
can today?" The answer is "mostly, yes".
Rakudo Star misses a few Unicode features Perl 5 has and doesn't have non-blocking IO
across all its backends. In the unlikely event you've ever used
Perl formats, they're missing too.
Other than that, the "not quite done" parts are things /usr/bin/perl5
can't do right now:
advanced macros, threads and concurrency, specialist data-types for people working with
large numeric data sets, and a few other bits and pieces. Additionally, performance and
stability have the characteristics of an alpha.
But it has all the rest of the cool stuff you were promised, already:
-
A rich OO model with mixins, compositions, parametric roles, all sorts of fun stuff
-
Junctions, which are composite values
-
And almost everything else you'd want from an alpha of a new dynamic language...
Most of the current work on "Perl 6" is in fixing bugs, performance, and stability of the pieces that makes up the Rakudo Star distribution rather than adding new features.
Although Perl 6 was originally envisioned as the next great version of Perl, the community now deems Perl 5 and Perl 6 as separate projects with separate development teams and project goals. Perl 5 continues to flourish into its 3rd decade and there is no plan for it to cease development anytime soon. Read more about it here.
Modules
One of Perl's strengths has always been CPAN. Perl 6 doesn't have a rich CPAN infrastructure yet, but a list of Perl 6 modules is available
Some quick links:
Rosetta Code
Rosetta Code shows how many different programming tasks are accomplished in many different languages. Over 700 Perl 6 examples are linked to from the Perl 6 category
Documentation
Many examples are linked to from the official Perl 6 documentation
Rakudo has a JVM backend! That's cool, right?
There are a number of tutorials and code examples at the official Perl 6 documentation
Perl Careers, for London-based Perl jobs made it.
It lives on Github