I don't think the effect would only be temporary. A number of core issues could be fixed, and very detailed guidelines for the libraries could (and should) be written and enacted. The amount of ugliness that still could creep in after that would be a lot less. I'm pretty sure it would not ever become even a tenth of the current amount.
But you're entirely right that yet another language is anything but wanted today. The comparison with bash doesn't quite hold, though; the difference is that bash already has a large user base whereas Pike do not. I.e. there is comparatively little momentum to loose. Also, the users are probably more concerned with the compatibility aspects than the name since it's the incompatibilities that would make a transfer difficult.
Even so, a considerable effort has went into the branding of the name "Pike" so we must of course consider very carefully whether to release this new language under a new name, or perhaps the same name with "incompatible" printed all over it, or at all. That's why I thought it should only be very unofficial fork(*) for the time being. Just a toy that we can play with, to see how it turns out. Only when it starts to get very good we might begin to ponder how to release it.
*) With "fork" I mean "cvs fork", not "project fork" with its own web site etc.
/ Martin Stjernholm, Roxen IS
Previous text:
2003-01-06 22:45: Subject: Re: Inconsistency.
That would have to be one huge massive kludge of uggly to justify something as drastic as a change of name.
Sure, the problem might be solved temporarilly. The same problem will come back in due time. In the meantime, the language previously known as pike will loose momentum and in the third or fourth incarnation it will probably be dead outside of the core. Just look at what happened to bash and bash2. Sure, some people use bash2 for the added features - most people still havent bothered even though it is their most used application. It's just not worth the PITA to upgrade.
I'd vore for every now and then (with a major release?) dropping backwardscompability. Perhaps there should be some sort of hefty penalty for commiting code that doesn't follow the official pike naming conventions (which BTW is something that I've completetly failed to get any sort of grips on).
/ Peter Lundqvist (disjunkt)