Re: 25 Years of Perl
On Mon, Nov 19, 2012 at 08:12:46PM -0500, David H. Adler wrote: > On Mon, Nov 19, 2012 at 05:29:29PM +, Dave Cross wrote: > > At the LPW on Saturday I'm giving a talk entitled "25 Years of Perl". > > > > I have the structure of the talk, and I have worked out most of the > > things that I want to cover. But I wanted to make sure that I didn't > > miss anything important. > > > > So I thought I'd turn to the london.pm hivemind. What parts of > > Perl's history do you think are important. I'm particularly > > interested in two areas. > > > > 1/ Technical > > > > What CPAN modules deserve to be mentioned as part of Perl's history? > > Which Perl infrastructure projects are (or were) important? Are > > there any other technical things that need to be covered? > > You're going to cover the Acme:: namespace, of course? [insert evil grin > here] > > > 2/ Community > > > > What community initiatives should I cover? Can I mention TPI without > > giving some people nightmares? How much detail can I cover about > > Perl Mongers? Which conferences deserve a mention? Does anyone > > remember how and when YAS became TPF? > > If memory serves, YAS didn't "become" TPF. They were separate entities, > as was Perl Mongers. At a certain point, Kevin decided he didn't want to > run YAS anymore and brian decided not to run Perl Mongers anymore (they > both had other stuff that was taking up their time). As a result, they > were both absorbed into TPF. Wikipedia says PM became part of TPF in > 2000, but that feels too early to me. You should probably check further > for a real date. brian might know. Considering that YAS was created in 2000, during YAPC 19100, I don't think there even was a TPF by 2000 yet. But considering TPFs legal status, there should be documentation on when it was founded. I'd ask Karen or Allison. Abigail
Re: 25 Years of Perl
On 11/20/2012 04:57 AM, Yitzchak Scott-Thoennes wrote: On Mon, Nov 19, 2012 at 5:12 PM, David H. Adler wrote: If memory serves, YAS didn't "become" TPF. They were separate entities, as was Perl Mongers. At a certain point, Kevin decided he didn't want to run YAS anymore and brian decided not to run Perl Mongers anymore TPF also borged perlmonks, though I believe much more recently. I'm pretty sure that TPF absorbed both Perl Mongers and Perl Monks at the same time. I remember an announcement being made at OSCON. And the only OSCONs I've been to are 2000-2002. Dave... -- Dave Cross :: d...@dave.org.uk http://dave.org.uk/ @davorg
Re: 25 Years of Perl
On Mon, Nov 19, 2012 at 5:12 PM, David H. Adler wrote: > > If memory serves, YAS didn't "become" TPF. They were separate entities, > as was Perl Mongers. At a certain point, Kevin decided he didn't want to > run YAS anymore and brian decided not to run Perl Mongers anymore TPF also borged perlmonks, though I believe much more recently.
Re: 25 Years of Perl
On Mon, Nov 19, 2012 at 05:29:29PM +, Dave Cross wrote: > At the LPW on Saturday I'm giving a talk entitled "25 Years of Perl". > > I have the structure of the talk, and I have worked out most of the > things that I want to cover. But I wanted to make sure that I didn't > miss anything important. > > So I thought I'd turn to the london.pm hivemind. What parts of > Perl's history do you think are important. I'm particularly > interested in two areas. > > 1/ Technical > > What CPAN modules deserve to be mentioned as part of Perl's history? > Which Perl infrastructure projects are (or were) important? Are > there any other technical things that need to be covered? You're going to cover the Acme:: namespace, of course? [insert evil grin here] > 2/ Community > > What community initiatives should I cover? Can I mention TPI without > giving some people nightmares? How much detail can I cover about > Perl Mongers? Which conferences deserve a mention? Does anyone > remember how and when YAS became TPF? If memory serves, YAS didn't "become" TPF. They were separate entities, as was Perl Mongers. At a certain point, Kevin decided he didn't want to run YAS anymore and brian decided not to run Perl Mongers anymore (they both had other stuff that was taking up their time). As a result, they were both absorbed into TPF. Wikipedia says PM became part of TPF in 2000, but that feels too early to me. You should probably check further for a real date. brian might know. Although it only goes up to 2002, the Perl Timeline (Elaine's work, iirc) at http://history.perl.org would probably be of some use to you. A lot of links there, too, including Jon Orwant's interview with Perl.com about the demise of TPI (sadly, not including his statement "He was from the planet Blobnar"). In other news, the entire first page of google results for "blobnar orwant" is the result of my sigfile. More seriously, though, I think TPI is probably worth including, but I wouldn't dwell on it. As far as detail on PM, what are you thinking of including. Unless you're referencing something from a non-public list, I can't imagine there's much that would be a problem. > It's slightly unfortunate that I've only been involved with Perl for > about 60% of its lifetime. So anything you can share from the first > ten years or so of Perl's existence would be *really* appreciated. A glance at the timeline jogs my memory enough to indicate the people who would know about this would be Larry, Tom, Randal, Jon Orwant, Jarkko, Andreas. Unfortunately, I popped in right about at the 10 year mark myself, so I don't think I have much to offer there. If there's anything you think I might know that would be of help, feel free to let me know. I certainly should be able to give you a good deal of info on PM and the White Camels. dha -- David H. Adler - - http://www.panix.com/~dha/ "When the bug expands, I contract. When it contracts, I expand. And when an opportunity appears, I do not fix the bug -- my keyboard does it, on its own."- Chip Salzenberg
Re: Duct Tape Quotation
On 11/19/2012 06:03 PM, andrew-per...@mail.black1.org.uk wrote: On Mon, Nov 19, 2012 at 09:58:51PM +, Tom Hukins wrote: Perl was once described as "the duct tape that hold the Internet together". As I recall this phrase comes from the webmaster of Tried looking in the OED and that doesnt shed any light. But following amused me 1995 Economist 1 JulyThe..servers that make up the most popular part of the Internet are often written in Perl, and virtually all Web-based information exchanges are handled with the language. that is bizarre. they must be conflating cgi/perl apps with the web servers themselves. and no way did 100% of the web exchange run on perl. i can't guess percentage but c was in heavy use for crawlers and such. but this is not a quote from a technical source so it can be just amusing anyway. uri
Re: 25 Years of Perl
> "Chris" == Chris Benson writes: Chris> I think the early days of comp.lang.perl (before the split) with informed, Chris> entertaining & helpful commentary from some of stalwarts was also key Chris> in the rise of Perl. I believe there was also a perl mailing list before that. -- Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095 http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/> Smalltalk/Perl/Unix consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc. See http://methodsandmessages.posterous.com/ for Smalltalk discussion
Re: Duct Tape Quotation
On 19/11/12 21:58, Tom Hukins wrote: This possibly leads on from Dave's question earlier: Perl was once described as "the duct tape that hold the Internet together". As I recall this phrase comes from the webmaster of sun.com in the mid-nineties, but I can't find any evidence for this. Wikipedia points at some anecdotal salon.com article that fails to cite the original source. Popular search engines don't reveal anything helpful either. Hopefully someone here can remind me, if only to reassure me that I haven't invented yet another faux-fact. Thanks, Tom Most of the google hits give you this one, directly or indirectly http://oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/perl/news/importance_0498.html _As Hassan Schroeder, Sun's first webmaster, remarked: "Perl is the duct tape of the Internet."_ after some refinement you'll get this one: http://about.me/hassanschroeder HTH Cheers Fred Youhanaie
Re: Duct Tape Quotation
On Mon, Nov 19, 2012 at 3:03 PM, wrote: > 1995 Economist 1 JulyThe..servers that make up the most > popular part of the Internet are often written in Perl, and > virtually all Web-based information exchanges are handled with the > language. How the mighty have fallen… Paul
Re: Duct Tape Quotation
On Mon, Nov 19, 2012 at 09:58:51PM +, Tom Hukins wrote: > Perl was once described as "the duct tape that hold the Internet > together". As I recall this phrase comes from the webmaster of Tried looking in the OED and that doesnt shed any light. But following amused me 1995 Economist 1 JulyThe..servers that make up the most popular part of the Internet are often written in Perl, and virtually all Web-based information exchanges are handled with the language.
Duct Tape Quotation
This possibly leads on from Dave's question earlier: Perl was once described as "the duct tape that hold the Internet together". As I recall this phrase comes from the webmaster of sun.com in the mid-nineties, but I can't find any evidence for this. Wikipedia points at some anecdotal salon.com article that fails to cite the original source. Popular search engines don't reveal anything helpful either. Hopefully someone here can remind me, if only to reassure me that I haven't invented yet another faux-fact. Thanks, Tom
Re: 25 Years of Perl
On Mon, Nov 19, 2012 at 05:29:29PM +, Dave Cross wrote: > > 1/ Technical > > What CPAN modules deserve to be mentioned as part of Perl's history? > Which Perl infrastructure projects are (or were) important? Are > there any other technical things that need to be covered? Back before there were modules: the earliest version I used (3.something) came with *2p utilities that were useful in their own right and enabled bootstrapping knowledge from find, sed and especially in my case awk: http://code.activestate.com/lists/perl-advocacy/1671/ If a2p hadn't existed (and installed right alongside perl) I'm not sure whether I'd have started using Perl. I think the early days of comp.lang.perl (before the split) with informed, entertaining & helpful commentary from some of stalwarts was also key in the rise of Perl. Best wishes -- Chris Benson
Re: 25 Years of Perl
1/ Technical What CPAN modules deserve to be mentioned as part of Perl's history? Which Perl infrastructure projects are (or were) important? Are there any other technical things that need to be covered? I'd be sure to mention the strong role Perl played in the emergence of CGI applications-- both the Perl 4 cgilib.pl and Perl 5's CGI.pm. I came in to Perl just a year or two before 5.000 rolled out, so I can't talk to much from the pre-5 era. (My job at the time was using Perl on a large scale to do software configuration management (20+ application scripts, 15+ libraries, ~70,000 LOC), which I ended up transitioning from Perl 4 to Perl 5.) 2/ Community What community initiatives should I cover? Can I mention TPI without giving some people nightmares? How much detail can I cover about Perl Mongers? Which conferences deserve a mention? Does anyone remember how and when YAS became TPF? Don't forget The Perl Journal. Not only was it a useful resource, it gave a number of people a leg up into going from just using Perl, to writing about it and becoming more active members of the community as a result. At least, that was the case with me-- Jon Orwant invited me to write about AutoLoader/AutoSplit after I'd done some work fleshing out the docs for the core, and that directly led into writing more, and eventually becoming a CPAN contributor, book author, etc. Randy -- """ Randy J. Ray Sunnyvale, CA http://www.rjray.org rj...@blackperl.com twitter.com/rjray Silicon Valley Scale Modelers: http://www.svsm.org
25 Years of Perl
At the LPW on Saturday I'm giving a talk entitled "25 Years of Perl". I have the structure of the talk, and I have worked out most of the things that I want to cover. But I wanted to make sure that I didn't miss anything important. So I thought I'd turn to the london.pm hivemind. What parts of Perl's history do you think are important. I'm particularly interested in two areas. 1/ Technical What CPAN modules deserve to be mentioned as part of Perl's history? Which Perl infrastructure projects are (or were) important? Are there any other technical things that need to be covered? 2/ Community What community initiatives should I cover? Can I mention TPI without giving some people nightmares? How much detail can I cover about Perl Mongers? Which conferences deserve a mention? Does anyone remember how and when YAS became TPF? It's slightly unfortunate that I've only been involved with Perl for about 60% of its lifetime. So anything you can share from the first ten years or so of Perl's existence would be *really* appreciated. Cheers, Dave...
