25 Years of Perl

[Abigail]

On Wed, Nov 21, 2012 at 03:50:34AM -0500, David H. Adler wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 20, 2012 at 11:27:09AM +0100, Abigail wrote:
> > 
> > I started using Perl in 1995, when the main focus on the community was
> > on Usenet. At that time, it was just comp.lang.perl; the split into 
> > multiple groups was either late 1995, or early 1996. I first joined a
> > Perl IRC channel in 1997, but I don't know when that channel started.
> > But it was this channel that made YAPC happen (well, it was Kevin that
> > did the work, but if it wasn't for the IRC channel, there would not have
> > been demand, or participants for the first YAPC).
> 
> Data points that are bothering me: I first got on IRC sometime in the
> vicinity of 12May1996. I know this because the first two IRC channels I
> went into were #doctorwhochat and #perl. Which indicates I may have been
> in #perl before the first TPC, which makes no sense to me whatsoever. Oh
> well.

You were among the first Perl/#perl people I got to meet face-to-face. It
was the winter of 97/98 that I went to NYC and met with Lee (an Australian
guy; he came back to the US a year later to go to YAPC, and then I've
lost track of him -- perhaps he gave birth to more famous Australian Perl
community members that appeared later on the scene), Kevin and Schwern
(then still named Stupid; and he was only a few hours late). You joined
us later for food, IIRC.

A few months (weeks?) later, I went to my first Perl mongers meeting
(in Philly), and it all went downhill afterwards -- now I'm still trapped
in that rabbit hole.



Abigail