Developers of the Perl language the possibility of developing Perl 6 under a different name. Initially, Perl 6 was proposed to be renamed to 'Camelia', but then the focus to the name 'Raku' proposed by Larry Wall, which is shorter, associated with the existing perl6 compiler 'Rakudo', and does not overlap with other projects in search engines. The name Camelia was suggested as it is the existing name of the mascot and , a trademark owned by Among the reasons for the need for a renaming is the emergence of a situation where two different languages have formed under the same name, each having its own developer communities. Perl 6 has not become the next significant branch of Perl as expected, and can be considered a separate language created from scratch. Due to
the radical differences Using the same name for these languages leads to confusion, and many users continue to view Perl 6 as a new version of Perl, rather than fundamentally a different language. Moreover, some members of the Perl 6 developer community hold this view, insisting that Perl 6 is evolving as a replacement for Perl 5, even though Perl 5 development is ongoing and the porting of Perl 5 projects to Perl 6 is limited to isolated cases. Meanwhile, the name Perl continues
to be associated Larry Wall
video address At the PerlCon 2019 conference, it was made clear to the participants that both versions of Perl have reached a sufficient level of maturity, and their developing communities do not require oversight and can make decisions independently, including renaming, without seeking permission from the "Benevolent Dictator For Life."
The initiator of the renaming was Elizabeth Mattijsen, one of the main developers of Perl 6. Curtis "Ovid" Poe, the creator of the CPAN catalog, Elizabeth believes that the need for renaming has long been overdue and, despite the divided opinions in the community on the matter, delaying the name change is not advisable. Given that Perl 6's performance is finally on par with Perl 5, and in some operations, it starts to outperform Perl 5, now might be the best time for Perl 6 to change its name.
As an additional argument, the negative impact of Perl 5's established image on the promotion of Perl 6 has been mentioned, with some developers and companies perceiving it as a complicated and outdated language. In several discussions, developers have even dismissed the possibility of using Perl 6 simply because of their negative preconceptions against Perl. Among young people, Perl is seen as a language from a distant past, not worth using in new projects (similar to how young developers viewed COBOL in the 90s).
Source: opennet.ru
