I write Perl, which is a Turing-complete and genuinely useful language. There is another language called PERL -- a johnny-come-lately with limited utility, suitable only for very small, insecure, and hard to maintain web "applications". I'm not sure, but I think the etymology of the name is similar to that of JavaScript (originally LiveWire, renamed ostensibly to take advantage of Java's early web marketing push). It seems that PERL is doing the same.

This has lead to a great deal of confusion for end-users and even developers. Not only are the differences in spelling very subtle, but the pronounciation is ostensibly the same. Witness a slew of books and articles on Learning PERL which promise to teach good programming style that is only available in Perl (PERL itself has no error reporting constructs, libraries, or even niceties such as the strict and warnings pragmata!).

Marketers are starting to take advantage of this confusion, as well. I recently read an article purporting to compare three web programming frameworks. To the uninitiated, this may be a condemnation of the Perl programming language. (As it is, the claims are technically correct when discussing PERL, which has not progressed much since 1993 or 1994.)

I propose that we find the developers and promoters of PERL and convince them to change the name of their programming too. PINP has a nice ring to it -- PERL Is Not Perl.

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