Perl developers the possibility of developing the Perl 6 language under a different name. It was originally proposed to rename Perl 6 to "Camelia", but then attention to Larry Wall's proposed name "Raku", which in short is associated with the existing perl6 compiler "Rakudo" and does not overlap with other search engine projects. The name Camelia is suggested as it is the existing name of the mascot and , the trademark for which Larry Wall.
Among the reasons for the need for renaming is the emergence of a situation in which two different languages ββ\u6b\uXNUMXbformed under the same name, having their own developer communities. Perl XNUMX did not become the next major branch of Perl as expected, and can be seen as a separate language created from scratch. Because of from Perl 5, a large number of Perl 5 adherents, a too long development cycle (the first release of Perl 6 was released after 15 years of development) and a large accumulated code base, two parallel developing independent languages ββarose that were not compatible with each other at the source code level. As things stand, Perl 5 and Perl 6 can be seen as sister languages, with a relationship similar to that between C and C++.
The use of the same name for these languages ββis confusing and many users continue to think of Perl 6 as a new version of Perl rather than a fundamentally different language. Moreover, some representatives of the Perl 6 development community adhere to this opinion, continuing to insist that Perl 6 is being developed as a replacement for Perl 5, although the development of Perl 5 is carried out in parallel, and the transfer of Perl 5 projects to Perl 6 is limited to isolated cases. That being said, Perl's name continues with Perl 5, and the mention of Perl 6 requires a separate clarification.
, creator of the Perl language, in his to the participants of the PerlCon 2019 conference, he made it clear that both versions of Perl have already reached sufficient maturity and the communities developing them do not require guardianship and can make decisions on their own, including renaming, without asking permission from the "Magnanimous Dictator for Life".
The renaming was initiated by Elisabeth Mattijsen, a core developer of Perl 6. Curtis "Ovid" Poe, creator of the CPAN catalog, Elizabeth that the need to rename is long overdue and, despite the fact that the opinion of the community on the issue under discussion is divided, you should not delay the change of name. With the performance of Perl 6 finally on par with Perl 5, and for some operations starting to outperform Perl 5, this may be the best time for Perl 6 to change its name.
As an additional argument, the negative impact on the promotion of Perl 6 of the existing image of Perl 5, which is perceived by some developers and companies as a complicated and outdated language, is mentioned. In a number of discussions, developers have not even considered using Perl 6 just because they have a negative opinion formed against Perl. For young people, Perl is perceived as a language from the distant past, which should not be used in new projects (approximately as in the 90s, young developers belonged to COBOL).
Source: opennet.ru