25 Years of Perl

[Dave Cross]

Quoting "David H. Adler" <dha at panix.com>:

> On Mon, Nov 19, 2012 at 05:29:29PM +0000, 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]

Yes. There's a couple of posts on Perl Monks that nicely trace the  
beginning of Leon's namespace :)

>> 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.

Yeah, I'd think more like 2002. I'll check with Kevin and/or brian.

> 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.

Elaine's history page is being a *big* help.

> More seriously, though, I think TPI is probably worth including, but I
> wouldn't dwell on it.

I don't think anyone would like to 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.

I'm pretty much sorted with Perl Mongers. I was involved with most of that.

Cheers,

Dave...