Re^2: What is Perl6?

[punkish]

This is not unfamiliar territory.

Perhaps not to you. It certainly was to me, which is why I started this thread. I asked a few of my colleagues. They agreed with me. For good measure, I called up a friend of mine who is a Python programmer. He also said that this was confusing to him. He considers himself a Python programmer, he downloads Python, he programs in Python, his programs are written in Python, and he uses Python (the compiler/run-time) to run his programs.

sigh. Look. I admit that I am technically wrong. But, I am telling how it is. If we want less confusion, if we want Perl 6 to get mindshare, in my highly unscientific but very human-centric view, the message has to be clear and unambiguous, not loaded with technical distinctions that most people will find confusing needlessly.

Update: By the way, I always found Java naming conventions terrible. They stank to high heaven. Its been a while, but I was always puzzled by Java 2 Version 5 SE whatever. There was the JDK and the JVM and the hotspot technology and the JRE. Seriously?

It is like Japanese electronics companies naming their products compared to Apple -- you have the svelte Sony VPCZ1290X Vaio computer on the one hand or you have the Apple MacBook on the other.