25 Years of Perl

[Andrew Savige]

Though there doubtless isn't time for a deatiled history of the

lighter side of Perl culture, for completeness, in addition to
Acme modules, we have: JAPH, Obfu, Golf, Poetry, April Fools.

Some highlights:

JAPH: First JAPH by merlyn 1988, followed later by trickier ones.
Abigail's later popularisation of the JAPH.

Obfu: TPJ Obfuscated Perl comps 1996-2000 run by Jon Orwant.
Paris Perl Mongueurs $A++ page. Erudil's famous Camel Code on a
T-shirt 2000. Larry's winning entry in the C obfucated comp 1986.
Damian's SelfGOL; BooK and Jerome Quelin's multi-lingual obfus.

Golf: Greg Bacon coins "Perl Golf" on CLPM 1999.
Early informal golf battles Larry v Randal on CLPM 1990.
RSA encryption/decrpytion in Perl as a signature file 1995.
Live Perl Golf Apocalypse 2000 at TPC 4, aka uri's triumph.
TPR Golf comps 2002. Perl golf transmogrifying into code golf
in 50+ languages 2005. BTW, code golf is way more popular in
Python than Perl nowadays, which may refute some of the
arguments in this thread:

 http://www.dagolden.com/index.php/163/stop-with-the-perl-golf-already/

Poetry: Larry's April Fools "Black Perl" comp.lang.perl.poems
newsgroup prank 1990. Sharon Hopkins seminal "Camels and Needles"
paper 1991. Sharon's first poetry comp 1991. Later poetry comps
run by Kevin Meltzer, TPC, and ActiveState 1990s. Damian's Coy
module 1999 and subsequent explosion of interest in haiku.
TPC 4 2000 haiku contest won by chipmunk.

April Fools: Larry's Black Perl comp.lang.perl.poems 1990,
Partain's Haskerl 1993,
merlyn's sh2perl 1998,
the lovely David Adler Esq.'s Semi::Semicolons 1999,
foy's Java Mongers 1999,
Damian's Acme::Bleach/acme's Acme::Buffy/DrHyde's Acme::Pony 2001,
Cozens' elaborate Parrot prank 2001.
April Fools patches to P5P.

Full details can be found at:

 http://perlmonks.org/?node_id=412464  (JAPH)
 http://perlmonks.org/?node_id=424355  (Obfu)
 http://perlmonks.org/?node_id=437032  (Golf)
 http://perlmonks.org/?node_id=451207  (Poetry)
 http://perlmonks.org/?node_id=540609  (April Fools)

Enjoy,
/-\