Speaking of Platonic ideals: you seem to have a strange idea about how the English language works. Sure, English actually tends to conform to a (very complex) set of rules, but many of those rules are exceptions to other rules, and even those excepting rules have exceptions much of the time. Thus, your half-baked attempt to retrofit terms that are properly unix jargon to your vision of the Platonic ideal of the English language is not only misguided in its ignorance of subcultural jargon rules but also in its impression of English as being a pure extrapolation from some set of inviolable and unvarying rules. The Ford Taurus is not, in instantiation, called the ford taurus because that's the way the rules of English treat brand names for cars in common parlance, while Perl implementations are called perl in unix systems because that's the way the rules of unix-hacker jargon as a subset of English treat executable binaries.
I find it ironic that you're trying to argue that Perl is properly perl because of your gymnastic feats in an attempt to contort the term's history to fit your Platonic ideal of the English language, all while violating the rules of English every few sentences in use of very simple, undisputed rules of syntax and grammar such as possessives, sentence structure, punctuation, et cetera. Normally, I don't pick on the spelling, grammar, and other errors of English usage when disagreeing with someone, but since you're claiming everyone but you is wrong about how the English language is used it seems not only fair game but a highly relevant point. How can you instruct the rest of us in the use of the English language and application of its rules when you do not even know them yourself?
You furthermore contradict yourself, claiming that Perl (or "perl" as you'd have it) was an acronym first, then go on to say that Larry Wall "flip-flopped back to the old name" (emphasis mine), thus effectively conceding the point that it's properly a backronym rather than strictly an acronym.
While your so-called history of Perl's purpose is essentially irrelevant to the discussion at hand, it's worth noting that Perl was, from day one, apparently far more than merely a replacement for shell scripts. It was a replacement for a great many things, including shell scripts, sed and awk, C for system administration, and probably half a dozen other things besides.
I recommend Wall's State of the Onion addresses if you want to know more about the early history of Perl. It seems like every one of them gives up some new tidbit of information on his early motivations and decisions.
EDIT: While it's not really all that big a deal to me, or even most people, how you choose to spell it or why you make that decision, making wildly inaccurate claims about how it really is spelled according to your own hasty generalizations and other logical fallacies just begs for corrections. I don't care if you call it "perl" rather than "Perl", but telling me I'm wrong for calling it "Perl" because the Ford Taurus isn't called a "ford taurus" when it's sitting in my driveway isn't going to convince me you know what you're talking about.
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- apotheon
CopyWrite Chad Perrin |
In reply to Re^6: top ten things every Perl hacker should know
by apotheon
in thread top ten things every Perl hacker should know
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