Re: FAQ 1.12 What's the difference between "perl" and "Perl"?

Charlton Wilbur wrote:
Gordon Corbin Etly wrote:

Ok, if you believe in Judaism, and 20 people who you work with
believe in Buddhism, and if those 20 people start imposing
certain beliefs on you, and the other hundreds of people in
your place, would you not consider this wrong? Should you not
be able to walk through that particular cubicle cluster without
having to conform to their view that they are pressuring you to
do, despite what you anyone else may believe in?

How is this any different than a particular group of people
telling others that they should not wrote "PERL" when there is
no real reason of any substance that makes it wrong.

The spelling of Perl is relevant to the work.

I would say the actual programs created, and the skills of those writing
them, are far more relevant than what a particular subset of a community
regards as correct spelling.

In particular, someone who is asininely stubborn about spelling Perl
as PERL is also likely to have other idiosyncracies that make him
difficult to get along with;

Could the same not be said about the "other side", that is also being
quote stubborn? Why be one-sided about it? And even making the
connection is a fallacy. Just because someone spells it as "PERL" and
does so based on the words of Larry Wall, does not make him or her any
less of potentially competent programmer (or hacker.)


Why would you ding someone for writing in short hand what Larry
Wall himself says Perl stands for?

Because the Perl FAQ says not to do it.

The FAQ is not gospel and it certainally is not infallible, and it most
certinally is not a greater authority than Larry WAll himself.


Someone who writes PERL instead of Perl has either not read the FAQ or
believes he knows better than the FAQ,

This is naother fallicious presumption. It could merely mean they have
chosen to regard the words of Larry Wall higher than a user-writen FAQ.


and both of those are very bad signs in a candidate.

Do you really believe that?


I really have to disagree. It's been proven that Larry Wall
himself gave expansions of what Perl stands for,

As a joke.

Not in the article I posted, it wasn't. It's also in the perldoc in the
description for 'perl'.


and another way to write that is "PERL", yet they refuse to
amend the FAQ, and they continue to push *their* *view*, that
it is wrong, when the facts point the other way. Whether it's
one person's view, or that of a group of people, it doesn't
make it right.

When it's the view of a significant majority, that's enough to get it
into dictionaries.

1) Can you please prove that you speak for the *majority* of Perl uers
or the Perl community?

2) It's already in many reference materials. It's also in perldoc.


Ted Zlatanov wrote:
On Wed, 9 Jul 2008 13:30:49 -0700 "Gordon Corbin Etly" wrote:

How is this any different than a particular group of people telling
others that they should not wrote "PERL" when there is no real
reason of any substance that makes it wrong. Sure they use it as a
litmus test to see if one follows their "religion", but it's asking
someone to write "God" by the name you religion calls it, instead
of respecting that they may want to write it their own way.

Regardless of your opinion, *the community* writes it "Perl"
consistently, and the 3-4 exceptions you've found are irrelevant
compared to the vast number of times it's been written correctly.

Again, what makes you think that this view, that "PERL" is wrong, really
reflects the views of the *majority* of the Perl community? What it
looks like to me, is that it's a certain subset of the community that
regards themselves as higher than everyone else, that pushes this view.
I've never seen anyone other than a select few, and really only in this
news group, pushing this view.

It's in perldoc, it's in an Linux Magazine article where Larry states in
his own words, and not in a joking manner, that Perl stands mainly for
"Practical Extraction and Report Language", and none of you can
definitively tell me (or anyone else reading) why it cannot be
acceptable to write that as "PERL" for short. Instead, it's the same old
excuses.


--
Gordon C. Etly
Email: perl -e "print q{}.reverse(q{moc.liamg@xxxxxxxxxxx})"


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