Re^6: What's wrong with Perl 6? ("Perl6")

[tye]

Most humans on this site seem to have no trouble understanding that someone who writes PERL means Perl, though said person will hear about it at least once.

Not from me. I guess not being alone in being a pain in the arse may be of some confort to you, but it isn't really of any comfort to me. ;)

I said "most humans" because most humans are not pedants (praise be to Allah). I suspect that "most humans on this site" are also not pedants (but that certainly isn't as clear as the prior claim) but it seems it is hard to throw a brick (aka "comment") on this site without hitting a pedant (aka "without getting 'hit' by a pedant").

Note that you claimed to not know what "Perl6" was, so I apologize for offering to enlighten you. Sarcasm is a bitch.

For my part, I'll continue to write "Perl6" for the very practical reason I gave. If some actually voice objections (because "Perl6" can be taken as a new name rather than the same name with a different version number), then I'll also continue to chuckle at them.

[chromatic]

If some actually voice objections...

... you mean besides Larry, who for some reason believes he has some moral claim to the name "Perl"? He named it "Perl 6". He refers to it as "Perl 6". He doesn't refer to it as "Perl6". This leads me to believe that he prefers the name "Perl 6".

Now you personally can call it whatever you want, whether "Perl6" or "Rindolf" or "Kurila" or "Chonk" or "Topaz", but I'll take my cues from the person who actually created and named the thing.

[tye]

Larry can name it whatever the heck he wants to. I have no claim on what it is named. I often refer to Perl version 6 as "Perl6" for the reason I gave. Sorry, but I won't be adding a disclaimer of "The use of the string 'Perl6' should not be construed in any way as an attempt to rename Perl", leaving it to normal humans to understand that and for pedants to be entertainingly annoyed, as is their wont.

I actually know that the official name is not "Perl6". And, you know what, if I gave someone perl5.tar.gz I am pretty dang sure that they wouldn't complain "Hey! You gave me the wrong file. I wanted perl-5.tar.gz. This is some 'perl5' distribution that I've never heard of!". Normal humans naturally strongly suspect that "Perl6" is not 'a name'. I'm sorry that your straw man can't distinguish between "Perl6" and "Rindolf", but the rest of us can. If I start calling it "Rindolf", will you stop pretending out loud to not know what I'm talking about? Of course not (except that you won't have to pretend).

Now, if I write some official documentation and let "Perl6" slip in, then please feel free to suggest a change. I've never chastised anyone for casually referring to this site as "Perl Monks" but I have done a little work to make the official site components stick to "PerlMonks" (but not so much work as to have eliminated all cases of calling the site "Perl Monks", for example).

You see, I expect reasonable people writing non-casually to go to an official source when determining how to properly spell someone's (or something's) name and that chastising about spelling in casual communications is something that some official FAQ on netiquette is likely to correctly discourage.

And I think all concerned would be well served by reducing the level of objection to trivial and obviously understood changes to how some name is written. I don't object to you writing "Perl 6". Feel free to be strict in what you produce but please pay some attention to the other half of that maxim.

Is this some case of converts making the worst zealots? "Larry prefers to refer to it as 'Perl 6'" therefore chromatic must chastise anyone who doesn't, like Him, hold up one shoe and let the other be upon his foot? Does Larry go around chastising any who he notices casually mentioning "Perl6"? Does he then get into arguments over it? Depending on the answers, might I suggest that you either follow his lead there as well or have the good sense not to? (:

Really, if Larry is as upset as you appear to be by the thought that some might intentionally refer to It as "Perl6", then he should go around calling it "Perl version 6" or "Perl v6" or something that doesn't just beg to be shortened. He's a linguist; he should know better.

I'm just glad that Perl 6 has a good keyword that fits so well with its name. I've come to hate true acronyms like PAR and SMART, especially since Google decided that searching for <<"p a r">> should no longer be different than searching for <<p-a-r>>.

I'm a proponent of Perl 6's official keyword being "Perl6" (and of ignoring case). And I am a proponent of mentioning Perl 6's keyword when writing about Perl 6 on-line. A good way to do that is just to refer to it (at least once) by its keyword instead of by its name, especially because humans naturally at least strongly suspect that this particular keyword isn't the name, despite Larry's possible fears.