25 Years of Perl

[Abigail]

On Fri, Nov 23, 2012 at 07:36:23PM -0500, Uri Guttman wrote:
> this thread reminds me of something we need to crow about more. so many  
> conventions, inventions, ideas have come from the perl community and  
> then be copied/stolen/absorbed by other langs, usually without much  
> recognition. the most obvious is regexes with the pcre package everyone  
> seems to use but it never can be truly perl compatible. how often have  
> we seen regex questions in perl channels/groups for users in other  
> langs? they say perlers know regexes better. hmmm

Regexes aren't a Perl invention. Larry started off with incorporating
Henry Spencers regexes. As for PCRE, they took Perl regexes, and went 
way beyond. There was a dramatic increase in the number of regex features
when 5.10 came out -- many of them were backports from PCRE and other
languages. The fact so many of those features have multiple syntaxes was
because Perl wasn't leading, or second or even third to implement it.
It was late in the game.

> TAP is used everywhere now. perl invented and spread it so it is  
> universal in the perl world.

"Everywhere"? I've yet to encounter a usage outside of perl or CPAN.

> cpan is always being copied (poorly) by other langs. they just never get  
> the community feeling of uploading to cpan as a cred and for sharing.

CPAN isn't a Perl invention. Perl copied CTAN. It's ironic that you blame
others for not giving "cred", right there when discussing something that
Perl copied from others.

> yapc has yet to be properly copied. no one else delivers more bang for  
> the buck and fun as well.
>
> mjd invented lightning talks and they are at many confs now, not just  
> lang ones. another perl invention with no credit given.


Hmmm. MJD certainly was the person to pitch the idea at the second YAPC.
I don't know whether he came up with himself, or whether he copied something
he has encountered before. But at best, it's MJDs invention, not a Perl
invention, and not even a community invention. After more than 10 years,
we still use the same format, little change from the community here.


Abigail