> and changing it now would just massively add to the confusion ...
There are two types folks who care about Perl - both are in dwindling numbers. The old-timers -- they never have and will never be confused and clearly understand that there is urgency for that "ship", now more than ever. The new-comers and those have deserted the ship and looking for an opportunity to come back -- they are massively confused as hell right here right now.
There is only one real reason for not launching that ship -- Larry Wall has taken that sailed ship long ago and will not come back (admit his mistake).
> There is only one real reason for not launching that ship -- Larry Wall has taken that sailed ship long ago and will not come back (admit his mistake).
To my understanding, he's admitted his mistake. That doesn't mean that after this much time, going back is the best solution. There are major positives and negatives to all options, so at this point people are just letting it stay as it is rather than force it into something that could be even worse. People have had well over a decades to come to terms with the naming, and coming out with Perl 7 (or taking the name Perl 6 back) aren't really going to help with anyone that's already confused.
Perl 5 and Perl 6 are still both advancing on their own paths, it's not like either one was actually stopped because of this.
No, but launching a new ship is a bad idea if your reasons are frivolous. It's a waste of resources. Most people seem to think that resources like labor and trust are magical and grow on trees in community-driven projects (especially when it comes to executing on their pet-projects or desired features), and I can tell you they don't.
> The new-comers and those have deserted the ship and looking for an opportunity to come back -- they are massively confused as hell right here right now.
What exactly is so confusing about "Perl 5 is a stable language that has been in use for decades, and will remain developed, and Perl 6 is a backwards incompatible evolution that is independent". You're saying things like you're "confused as hell" but it's not really hard to figure out, and it's not even clear how hard you actually tried. The Perl.org webpage even literally states "Perl 6 is a sister language, a member of the Perl family, that is not intended to replace Perl 5".
Frankly when people say things like this, I'm often convinced it's not actually out of genuine confusion, but often feigning ignorance to make a point, to the level of being child-like. Computer programmers _love_ making everything complicated (especially over small trivialities that "could" be "fixed" if we "cared enough") -- but "Two similar things share a common family name" is not very complicated, to pretty much anybody.
And here's a counterpoint: I haven't written Perl in nearly 10 years with any regularity, and I recently started a new project because I wanted to write a small web app. Here's what I did: I searched "Popular Perl Web Frameworks" and came across Mojolicious. I then saw it was a Perl 5 framework. Then I followed the tutorial and wrote a web application and I was done. There was no "massive confusion" about it.
> Larry Wall has taken that sailed ship long ago and will not come back (admit his mistake).
People in the Perl community have admitted for a very long time that there were many mistakes made in the development of Perl 6, including the poor naming convention that maybe ties the languages too closely, when they are quite different. I'd say the mistakes are well known, even 10 years ago when things were far different.
Your mind is shrouded by your zealous emotion that you are handicapped in your perception.
> What exactly is so confusing ...
I can see you how you don't understand; unfortunately, you are having trouble understand the other way.
> Frankly when people ...I'm often convinced it's not actually out of genuine confusion ...
It doesn't take you a few sentences away to getting close to name-calling. It is very difficult to listen at this stage.
---------------
> it's not even clear how hard you actually tried.
You are putting me in the wrong camp. I love Perl and I have been using Perl for over 10 years. I am not confused. Perl is Perl5; Perl6 is an experiment that hasn't succeeded yet, And Perl6 is irrelevant to Perl5 from a language point of view (although, not vice versa).
I have students that I want to show Perl to. They, being young and natural, will not put their heart to Perl 5 if Perl 6 is out there -- different alright, but Perl 6 surely is newer and must be the future, right? Then they find the state that Perl 6 is slower than Perl 5 and obviously less mature, so they wait -- by moving on.
I have colleagues and old admins who are looking back but all their current thought are: Perl is dead, how is Perl 6 doing.
> People in the Perl community have admitted for a very long time that there were many mistakes ...
Acknowledged mistakes that have no action/effort of correcting them are not admitted. Sunk-boat fallacy is just a n excuse for not admitting mistakes.
Amen. I’d love to see a rebrand to Rakudo and Pumpkin, where the latter is Perl5 plus some long-overdue backwards incompatible changes, but also 99% compatible.
I'm not really sure what you want in terms of backcompat breaking changes. I feel like if you do enough to make Perl 5 modern, you end up with Perl 6, but different. Once you add real Unicode support and a MOP and concurrency, you've reinvented more than half of Rakudo. It should be called Perl 7, so we can have yet another version.
I think there is this idea that you could graft the Perl 6 object model onto Perl 5 but keep the things people like about 5 (that it's implemented in C and installs more like a normal Unix/Linux tool that we are all familiar with). This would open the door for CPAN modules that exploit the cleaner and more modern object model like we have with Python and Ruby. Which would in turn allow Perl to be more in line with what people expect from a modern tool, combining the best of the old and best of the new.
I think if you start with the state of CPAN and work the problem in reverse you might see what people are wanting.
That doesn't prevent launching a new ship.
> and changing it now would just massively add to the confusion ...
There are two types folks who care about Perl - both are in dwindling numbers. The old-timers -- they never have and will never be confused and clearly understand that there is urgency for that "ship", now more than ever. The new-comers and those have deserted the ship and looking for an opportunity to come back -- they are massively confused as hell right here right now.
There is only one real reason for not launching that ship -- Larry Wall has taken that sailed ship long ago and will not come back (admit his mistake).