#comments

brian d foy started this Perl meme with a few questions. I haven’t written much about Perl recently, so here’s a little more.

· The person who introduced me to Perl showed me that…
Actually no one introduced me to Perl, I learned about it on the internets in ‘94, maybe I discovered it at a Gopher site?? I heard that it was good for making websites and decided to learn it – lived with that old Camel book for quite awhile. I still have it, pink spine and all, a little worse for wear, but all love.

· I first starting using Perl to…
build some websites. I learned Perl and CGI and started rocking some CGI programming on an Mac IIci running A/UX that me and some cohorts set up in the computer lab. Man, I wish I could remember what it was that I built!

· I kept using Perl because…
it got me my first job. Went to an NYTimes job fair a couple weeks after I graduated and got snapped up by the NYTimes itself for my mad Perl skills. I can remember sweating the “test” they provided – had to write a hello world type CGI script in Perl – and they said I could use cgi-lib.pl! Fortunately I passed and subsequently over the course of about a year helped transition the group from a mix of KSH and Perl to pretty much just Perl. Phew.

· I can’t stop thinking about Perl…
because, well, it’s what I do.

· I’m still using Perl because…
it’s the environment that let’s me get things done quickly and efficiently. And nuts if it isn’t the most fun language I’ve programmed in.

· I get other people to use Perl by…
example. I’m not a big proselytizer, I do what I do and talk about it when it’s brought up. People recognize a good thing when they see it. :)

· I also program in … and …, but I like Perl better since…
Well, at this point, I pretty much do Perl and some javascript. I have programmed professionally in Java mostly, with some C/C++ and Python thrown in for good measure. All fine languages, but for my money, Perl let’s me be the most productive I can be.

And there you have it. Don’t know how widespread this meme is, but here’s another one I found. If you’re reading this and are a Perl developer, blog it! Or post your reasons in the comments. Let’s spread the word!