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The First Ten Perl Monks

by eyepopslikeamosquito (Archbishop)
on Nov 16, 2014 at 13:31 UTC ( #1107342=perlmeditation: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??

Perl Monks has become a big part of my life, so I thought it would be fun to discover how it came into existence in the first place. In particular, I was eager to learn about its earliest users.

Please note that I only joined Perl Monks in 2002 and have not met any of the major players from the early days. The content of this node therefore is derived only from independent research and speculation, not first-hand knowledge. So, if any folks who actually witnessed these early historic events are listening, please respond away.

Perl Monks Origins

After some random googling on the history of Perl Monks, I hit upon this nugget from oostendorp.net, the home page of nate aka Nathan Oostendorp (co-founder of the technology news website and community Slashdot and founder of the online community Everything2):

Everything2.com was my own creation after Slashdot was acquired by Andover.net. It and its sister site, PerlMonks were developed in a CMS I designed called The Everything Engine. The Everything Development Company ran from 1999-2001, and consisted of Ryan "dem bones" Postma, Darrick Brown, Tim Vroom, Chromatic, and Robo.
Apart from using the incorrect case of chromatic, nate may have forgotten some other Everything developers, or at least interlopers, who appear to be among the first ten registered PerlMonks users, as we shall see later.

After finding that gem, googling for Slashdot uncovered Rob Malda:

Rob Malda (born May 10, 1976), also known as CmdrTaco, is an American Internet content author, and former editor-in-chief of the website Slashdot. Malda is an alumnus of Hope College and Holland Christian High School. In 1997, Malda and Jeff Bates created Slashdot while undergraduates of Hope College. After running the site for two years "on a shoestring", they sold the site to Andover.net, which was later acquired by VA Linux Systems. Malda ran the site out of the SourceForge, Inc. office in Dexter, Michigan.

and Jeff Bates:

Jeff Bates, also known as hemos, is the co-founder of Slashdot along with Rob Malda ("CmdrTaco"). Bates graduated from Holland Christian High School in 1994 and received a Bachelor's degree in History from Hope College in 1998.

and more, including Jonathan "CowboyNeal" Pater.

Holland Michigan

Holland is a coastal city in the western region of the Lower Peninsula of the U.S. state of Michigan. It is situated near the eastern shore of Lake Michigan on Lake Macatawa. Holland was settled in 1847 by Dutch Calvinist separatists, under the leadership of Dr. Albertus van Raalte. Dire economic conditions in the Netherlands compelled them to emigrate, while their desire for religious freedom led them to unite and settle together as a group.

-- Holland Michigan (wikipedia)

It seems that most of the major players in the formation of Perl Monks hail from this picturesque and charming city, an outpost of Dutch culture and tradition in the American mid-west, with a population of just 33,000!

Hope College is a private, residential liberal arts college located in downtown Holland, Michigan, United States, a few miles from Lake Michigan. It was opened in 1851 as the Pioneer School by Dutch immigrants four years after the community was first settled.

-- Hope College (wikipedia)

Slashdot, and the Everything Engine, were the brainchild of a bunch of creative Hope College students. In particular, Rob "Commander Taco" Malda, Jeff "Hemos" Bates, Nathan Oostendorp aka nate, Everything Engine architect Darrick Brown, and Tim Vroom all attended Hope College in the late 1990s. I'm pretty sure they also attended Holland Christian High School.

I gleaned this information only from browsing the internet, so if anyone knows different -- or knows of other influential players from the early days who also hail from Holland Michigan -- please let us know.

Blockstackers Inc

In particular, I don't know where early PerlMonks developer chromatic resided in the late 1990s; though he lives in Hillsboro, Oregon nowadays, he may have lived in Holland Michigan back then while working for BlockStackers, joining "late summer 2000".

BTW, nate refers to this company not as BlockStackers, but as "Blockstackers Intergalactic (BSI)". This node indicates that the perlmonks.org domain was owned by "Blockstackers Inc, 116 E.18th Holland MI 49423". Curiously, Block Stackers Inc still seems to be in business in Holland today, filing Tax Returns. No idea if this is the same BlockStackers Inc that founded PerlMonks however.

When I was moving to Amsterdam, pschoonveld advised me to demand a certain clause in my contract that translates to "pants not required"

-- Ovid from (Ovid - be careful around pschoonveld!) Re(3): Favorite Slacking Activity

Back in the heady Dot-com bubble era, Blockstackers Intergalactic (BSI) certainly seemed like a cool company to work for, located in a beautiful and historic city, with a name derived from Block Stacking Theory, and where wearing pants was optional.

Top Ten Countdown

For fun, and using the background information above, let's try to identify the first ten Perl Monks, counting down from ten to one.

No 10: cinder_bdt

Node id: 1336; user since: Dec 23 1999 at 22:49 UTC; last here: Jun 15 2005; Experience: 8; 1 post.

I noticed a cinder_bdt use.perl.org account. This tenth PM user could be Bryan D Thomas based on this twitter account. If anyone knows more, please let us know.

No 9: yiango

Node id: 1335; user since: Dec 23 1999 at 22:29 UTC; last here: Mar 01 2000; Experience: 27; 6 posts.

I suspect yiango is an early Slashdot or Holland Michigan person because in RE: The computer I use most runs... he says "Hey Tim" in response to vroom, indicating he may know vroom personally (update: nope, just a random Linux geek from Cyprus). Moreover, slasholic is a Perl script written by "yiango" to query slashdot for new articles. I found a circa 1999 yiango everything2 account, yiango sourceforge account and a yiango twitter account. The name "yiango" is obscure to me, but may be related to Cyprus, based on random googling.

yiango is the first "non-insider" Perl Monk, beating cinder_bdt to that honour by just twenty minutes. Update: and, hailing from Cyprus, the first international Perl monk.

Update: No 8a: dem bones

Node id: 1329; user since: Dec 23 1999 at 21:49 UTC; last here: Dec 12 2000; Experience: none; 0 posts.

Ryan "dem bones" Postma, one of the early Everything developers. Very little is known about him (see The E2 Backstory and here).

No 8: nate

Node id: 1316; user since: Dec 23 1999 at 03:36 UTC; last here: Jan 24 2009; Experience: 572; 24 posts.

Too easy. This is obviously the father of the Everything Engine, Holland Christian High School and Hope College alumnus, Nathan Oostendorp.

No 7: pschoonveld

Node id: 1027; user since: Dec 02 1999 at 11:56 UTC; last here: Oct 01 2010; Experience: 695; 29 posts.

His home node says he is from "Utrecht, The Netherlands". This may well be Patrick Schoonveld, who's linked-in account spookily lists his education as Hope College, Holland Michigan. His CV further lists a stint at SourceForge/Slashdot and indicates he has worked in the Netherlands. Finally, his "pants not required" advice to Ovid above suggests he was part of the Blockstackers (BSI) culture.

No 6: sgtbaker

Node id: 1012; user since: Nov 19 1999 at 02:42 UTC; last here: Feb 18 2000; Experience: 4; 1 post.

This one is quite a mystery. I found this library link where user "sgtbaker" recommends a couple of Perl books. Apart from that, nothing, nada, zilch. If anyone knows, please let us know.

Update: Found a sgtbaker user on everything2.com where his school is listed as Hope College and his company as Everything Development Company. It seems he worked closely with nate, so closely that his nickname was "the hands of nate" (a pun on the hands of fate, one of the worst movies ever made) ... so it remains a mystery why he was not listed as an Everything employee by nate above.

Update: Heartbreakingly, it seems that sgtbaker was not a real person, just a vroom (or perhaps nate) test account. Still, the mystery remains, why sgtbaker? Was vroom a keen fisherman, naming his test account after the Sergeant Baker fish?

No 5: vroom

Node id: 979; user since: Nov 12 1999 at 05:53 UTC; last here: Jul 04 2013; Experience: 1007430; 607 posts.

This is obviously Tim Vroom, primary founder of the PerlMonks web site. Kudos for that, but how on earth did he manage to accumulate over a million experience points?

Update: No 4a: DiBona

Node id: 942; user since: Nov 03 1999 at 05:05 UTC; last here: Never; Experience: 0; 0 posts.

When interviewed by jdporter (see below) about his early involvement at PM, Chris DiBona replied: "My interaction was limited to a teeny bit of stuff and a photo for the monk pictures".

No 4: dbrown

Node id: 859; user since: Oct 28 1999 at 07:37 UTC; last here: Oct 18 2001; Experience: 15; 2 posts.

This is almost certainly Darrick Brown, Hope College alumnus, outed as an early Everything Developer above by nate.

No 3: CmdrTaco

Node id: 857; user since: Oct 27 1999 at 04:21 UTC; last here: Nov 03 1999; Experience: 9; 0 posts.

Though hardly a prolific Perl Monks user, the nickname indicates this is the famous Rob "Commander Taco" Malda, co-founder of Slashdot.

Update: The Rob Malda Rule:, posted by gods on Sep 08 1999, was probably authored by CmdrTaco. Strangely, CmdrTaco's home node says "Writeups: None" yet if you click on "None" you find the one node authored by CmdrTaco namely Counting Substrings in Strings - curiously, this node was created on Oct 27 1999, two months before Perl Monks opened its doors to the public!

No 2: CowboyNeal

Node id: 850; user since: Oct 27 1999 at 02:31 UTC; last here: Jun 28 2000; Experience: 8; 0 posts.

This is indeed Jonathan "CowboyNeal" Pater of Slashdot fame.

No 1: paco

Node id: 846; user since: Oct 27 1999 at 01:12 UTC; last here: Oct 27 1999 at 02:16 UTC; Experience: 754; 1 post.

We have saved the best for last! 754 experience points from just one post! Amazing! The highest rated node of all time! (Update: oops, only 2nd highest after camel code, thanks tye ... but it is the most upvoted node in Perl Monks history).

The mysterious paco spent a total of just sixty four minutes at this site, incomprehensibly vanishing fifteen minutes before the second user arrived. paco achieved more in sixty four minutes than most of us do in a lifetime. A living legend. Like many others, I patiently await his return. During my research, there were indications from some that paco may not be a real user. Don't listen to those heretics. paco will return!

References

Everything2 References

References Added Later

Thanks to jdporter for some extra historical info:

Background References

Updated Nov 17 2014: Minor corrections and wording changes; Nov 22 2014: Added Everything2 References plus minor update to "Blockstackers Inc" section (no pants required) and mystery sgtbaker user; Nov 23 2014: Added a bit more detail to top ten section, added more References; Nov 30 2014: Added more references; Aug 5 2017: Added Perl Monk No. 8a dem bones, clarified Perl Monk No. 6 sgtbaker. May 2019: Added Background References. July 2019: added extra Paco reference from footpad, added user 4a Chris DiBona unearthed by jdporter.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: The First Ten Perl Monks
by GrandFather (Saint) on Nov 16, 2014 at 21:56 UTC

    You may also be interested in The early history of Perlmonks.Argh - didn't notice the reference in OP's list

    I recall seeing mention that both Vroom and merlyn received bonus XP for "services rendered". merlyn's bonus was subsequently removed after some protest from other monks. I've done some Super Searching, but can't find any evidence to back up this story so it could be, to quote herveus, "a peanut-laden steaming three-coiler".

    Perl is the programming world's equivalent of English
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        Yawn!

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      but can't find any evidence to back up this story

      well, IIRC, merlyn said it, vroom said it (and Corion repeated it), vroom(or Corion or ar0n) also explained how early on in the codebase someone needed to have the most XP :) ... yes, these are my recollections of the early days of 2001-2002 ... tye has a better memory :)

[reply]

        I don't actually remember any details about this (just that there was an award and, quite a bit later, a reversal of it). But RE: Saints: # of writeups vs. XPs says it was 1 million and Gratz Merlyn! shows that the award was retracted.

        - tye        

[reply]
      Howdy!

      One's words resurface in interesting ways...

      yours,
      Michael
[reply]
Re: The First Ten Perl Monks
by eyepopslikeamosquito (Archbishop) on Nov 23, 2014 at 07:32 UTC
[reply]
      Where I come from, we say that public figures have a limited right of privacy.

      Are those first ten contributors really public figures?

      Don't get me wrong I'm not accusing you of breaching privacy yet but I'm feeling unease if a forum starts to discuss RL infos of others and am wondering in which direction this investigation will continue to after you started gathering infos from different sites... :)

      What about the ten highest ranking monks? Are they public figures?

      E.g for years now I know about some monks which were (non simultanously) re-incarnations of the same person.

      While occasionally having issues with these personas I never tried publicly to link them together, b/c it was their/his decission to not reveal informations.

      Cheers Rolf

      (addicted to the Perl Programming Language and ☆☆☆☆ :)

[reply]

        Yeah, Privacy in general, and Internet Privacy in particular, are enormously complex topics.

        In writing this node, I felt torn between privacy concerns and reporting interesting historical facts. I suspect this is a common problem for historians and amateur family history researchers.

        The Dot-com bubble era in which Perl Monks formed is of interest to me, as are the individuals who made it happen. I'm amazed at how many influential players in this era came from Hope College Holland Michigan. As pvaldes pointed out, you could make a movie or write a book about this!

        I view the creation of Slashdot, the Everything Engine, and the Everything2 and PerlMonks web sites as significant accomplishments, significant enough to be of historical interest. Since I don't know any of the early players I can't be certain of course, but I hope they are proud of their historic role and accordingly would not mind being identified.

        See also:

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      FWIW ... where 'nothing' may be a valid value.

      A SOPW today (26 Nov 14, US EST) included a use info; which made me curious ...and which seems to lead to an ID on paco

      perldoc info
NAME
    perlinfo - a command-line frontend to HTML::Perlinfo


#        [irrelevant details -- for the purposes of this post -- edite
+d out]

EXAMPLES
       perlinfo -i

       'Saved file perlinfo.html'

       perlinfo -i /home/paco/www/perl-info.html

       'Saved file /home/paco/www/perl-info.html'

COPYRIGHT
    Copyright (c) 2009 by Mike Accardo

...

      [download]



      Quis custodiet ipsos custodes. Juvenal, Satires

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[d/l]
[select]

        That's a very cool idea. Good work! I'm not sure this is much positive evidence, though: of ACCARDO's modules currently on CPAN, none date to earlier than 2003; it's possible (I'd say likely) that Accardo was influenced by perlmonks' paco, rather than the other way around. Also note that "paco" would be an unusual nickname for a Michael; it's usually a nickname for Pablo or Pasquale, I think, as well as Francisco -- or so they say. Not that that proves Accardo didn't adopt this username, of course...

        I reckon we are the only monastery ever to have a dungeon stuffed with 16,000 zombies.
[reply]
        Finally we'll learn what happend to the Lindbergh baby!

        Cheers Rolf

        (addicted to the Perl Programming Language and ☆☆☆☆ :)

[reply]
Re: The First Ten Perl Monks (2nd)
by tye (Sage) on Nov 16, 2014 at 20:41 UTC
    The highest rated node of all time!

    2nd highest (at the moment).

    - tye        

[reply]
      However it seems to be the most upvoted node: 838 upvotes, vs. 781 for Erudils masterpiece.
[reply]
      doubtless on its way back (it seems I hadn't voted on it yet; corrected that oversight)
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Re: The First Ten Perl Monks
by eyepopslikeamosquito (Archbishop) on Nov 18, 2014 at 20:42 UTC

    I've had a bit more time to poke around in the catacombs.

    From Perl Monks turns 5 we learn from vroom that:

    5 years ago today, Perl Monks opened its doors for the first time. yiango and BBQ were among the first to wander in.
    Apart from setting the official Perl Monks birthday at Dec 23, this historic post indicates that yiango was the first "non-insider" Perl Monk. Of course, it also confirms that the first eight Perl Monks were indeed "insiders": either original Perl Monks site developers or their friends (or groupies) ... except paco of course, who has a supernatural genesis, beyond the shadow of a doubt.

    That leaves the two most mysterious "insiders" as: No. 6 sgtbaker; and No. 7 pschoonveld. sgtbaker remains by far the most mysterious because examining pschoonveld's posting history has revealed some further insights:

    • In this node, Ovid admits having had a beer with pschoonveld and "finds him rather cool". Update: the "pants not required" advice given to Ovid further indicates that pschoonveld was part of the BSI culture where wearing pants was optional ("The BSI motto. We believe that pants constrict us, so at our offical corporate headquarters, we wear clothing that doesn't restrict the flow of air around our genitals").
    • On their home nodes, both Jouke and Beatnik claim to have met this mysterious early monk in real life. He probably attended YAPC::Europe in Amsterdam in 2001.
    • According to this node, pschoonveld taught vroom how to swear in Dutch in preparation for his upcoming visit to the Netherlands.
    • Finally, this early node describes a gripping duel in a local bar, indicating that vroom and pschoonveld were drinking buddies in the early days.
    Since he was not listed as an official Everything developer by nate, and since his CV indicates he was officially working for venux.net at that time, I deduce that the mysterious pschoonveld was a Hope College buddy of vroom who hung out on the early Perl Monks web site for entertainment in his spare time (when not at the Pub).

    BTW, and curiously, this early node is a (deep) meditation posted by nate on Sep 09 1999 ... more than three months before he joined!

    Update: Found a sgtbaker user on everything2.com where his school is listed as Hope College and his company as Everything Development Company.

[reply]
Re: The First Ten Perl Monks
by pvaldes (Chaplain) on Nov 17, 2014 at 02:55 UTC
    okay, okay, but we're still waiting for the movie
[reply]

      Would love to see a movie about those innovative Hope College kids. Meanwhile, if you are looking for a Perl Monks "sacred" site to visit, I suggest Holland Michigan. The sacred sites that I would rush to are:

      Doubt my wife would understand this. That would seem to be cool though because, quite apart from its sacred Perl Monks sites, Holland Michigan seems like a really interesting and enjoyable city for a tourist to visit.

[reply]
Re: The First Ten Perl Monks
by eyepopslikeamosquito (Archbishop) on Aug 04, 2017 at 10:19 UTC

    jdporter kindly messaged me with still more vital historical information missing from my original post.

    Though correctly identifying Ryan "dembones" Postma as one of the early Everything developers, I somehow totally missed that he was also the ninth Perl Monk! He seems to be quite mysterious, at least I couldn't find any specific contribution made to Perl Monks by dem bones (2021 update: Zombified user account on Selected Best Nodes adds to the mystery).

    No 8a: dem bones

    Node id: 1329; user since: Dec 23 1999 at 21:49 UTC; last here: Dec 12 2000; Experience: none; 0 posts.

    Other Hope/Calvin College students from the early days who registered at Perl Monks include krikke (Josh Krikke) and Robo (Rob Oostendorp).

    Gratifyingly, jdporter confirmed the correctness of my guesses about:

    • Jonathan Pater
    • Darrick Brown
    • Patrick Schoonveld
    • Bryan D Thomas
    Heartbreakingly however, sgtbaker is apparently not a real person, but just one of vroom's many test accounts.

    The revered paco, of course, is no test account. He's a real person all right, and, tantalizingly, jdporter revealed that he had some sort of mysterious, perhaps supernatural, association with the early BSI developers. The paco mystery deepens!

    Update March 2021: jdporter noticed a mystery user trigger, the earliest user with no valid email on file (that is, his email field has no '@' in it). The mysterious trigger wrote just four nodes (consecutive node ids: 10895-10898), all made on May 10 2000, before disappearing the very next day.

    • Re: Static news system and Reaped: Re: Static news system and Reaped: Re: Static news system - these first three nodes appear to be essentially identical! I found these quotes interesting: "i dont know anything about mysql though, even though my service does have it" and "before i really get the site up i figured i should learn perl enough to satisfy me and stuff, it won't be up for a while". Was trigger an expert in provisioning web sites ... but lacking mysql and Perl chops?
    • RE: Re: Static news system - This quote "the answer is yes to everything (for the hosting service i will be choosing)" suggests he was answering a question (which appears to be lost?). Perhaps asking him about possible PM site improvements?

    Unlike the legend BBQ (a pioneer user from Dec 24 1999 last seen Apr 07 2009), trigger did not join PM until May 10 2000 and only visited us for one day, last seen May 11 2000.

    Was the mysterious trigger a consultant from an external organisation, helping the Hope College kids improve the early Perl Monks web site? No! It seems BBQ managed to salvage trigger's original question in Re: Static news system as:

    hi, i'm very new to perl, very... how can I make a simple news system for a static page with a comment section? where you log in as an admin and are confronted with news submissions form? i dont know much at all so...explain very thoroughly please...i dont know much at all with perl

    using server side and stuff, so the news will look good too, not just slopped together, kind of like slashcode, but minus everything else and simpler than the slashcode news and comment system, please. i'm very new and would like to learn a lot more, slashcode was of no help to me, and i want to do something much simpler although easy, i know this is a large request, but please help

    Disappointingly, it seems the mysterious trigger was just a random early PM newbie asking a question about how to create a simple news system ... who somehow managed to mangle the early PM node integrity (presumably due to a PM bug) ... which resourceful legend BBQ worked around by pasting trigger's original question into his reply. Sadly, trigger was more PM vandal than PM legend ... I wonder what he is up to today?

[reply]
Re: The First Ten Perl Monks
by eyepopslikeamosquito (Archbishop) on Sep 01, 2016 at 10:44 UTC

    jdporter kindly messaged me with some further and exciting historical information missing from my original post. I had totally missed an important player from the early days, namely kurt, Perl Monks user since Jan 11 2000, aka Dr. Kurt DeMaagd, PhD, formerly Assistant Professor at Michigan State University, currently working once again with nate at Sight Machine and currently a director of the Perl Foundation.

    Kurt was Business Manager for BSI from Jan 1999 to Jan 2001, studied Computer Science at Hope College 1996–1999, and was a co-founder with nate of slashdot, Everything2, and Perl Monks.

    For a time, kurt ran his own site "ThePope.org" which was probably running a version of the Everything Engine. Curiously, the disclaimer page at "ThePope.org" (scraped from the wayback machine) confirmed the BSI link:

    BlockStackers Intergalactic LLC is in no way associated with the Catholic Church.

    In 2012, Kurt co-authored with nate an O'Reilly book on Computer Vision. Curiously, the source code behind the book is written, not in Perl, but Python!

    Finally, kurt performed valuable work at YAS, as indicated by these posts:

    Dec 2023 update: jdporter unearthed some more information about two more early Perl Monks Everything Engine developers: both from UMich, and both set up early instances of the Everything Engine:

[reply]
Re: The First Ten Perl Monks
by jdporter (Chancellor) on May 13, 2019 at 20:13 UTC

    While spelunking in deepest, dankest infrastructure node jungle recently, I stumbled across a strange scrap of parchment. It bore no inscription* save two names; one was familiar to me, but the other was not:

    Nathan Oostendorp and Daron Vroon
    I was, as I'm sure you are, quite intrigued. So I fired off a telex to Mr. Oostendorp to inquire as to the heretofore unknown-to-us person behind this other name.

    His kind and learned reply presently came to me over the wire, bearing the following invormation:

    Daron was a part-time intern in the Everything Development Company and started at the same time as Tim. Yes, in Holland MI we had two interns named Vroon and Vroom and didn't bat an eye.

    While Tim worked mostly on PM, Daron worked pretty much exclusively on "ecore" stuff. He left mid-way thru the school year, while Tim kept on and eventually was employed full time. Vroon probably did have accounts at one point but it's likely they got de-privileged or deleted.

    * This is an exaggeration. The node, named Nodemail, lists these two characters as authors, and furthermore bears the following description: "Allows sending and recieving of email via the Everything::MAIL module."

    nate went on to say that "Nodemail was the set of nodes for sendmail functionality -- although I don't think it was widely used you could create basic email templates etc. I don't recall if it was actually tied to things like password retrieval etc."

    By way of post scriptum, nate reflected: "It's weird that I remember that since it's probably been 15 years since I've done active development on that system."

    I reckon we are the only monastery ever to have a dungeon stuffed with 16,000 zombies.
[reply]
      > Yes, in Holland MI we had two interns named Vroon and Vroom

      I was tempted to make some jokes about Dutch cliches ( windmills, tulips, clogs, ...) before I googled this town.

      Reality strikes again... ;-)

      Cheers Rolf
      (addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)
      Wikisyntax for the Monastery FootballPerl is like chess, only without the dice

      PS: So separatist Calvinists founded a monastery with popes?

[reply]
[reply]
Re: The First Ten Perl Monks
by eyepopslikeamosquito (Archbishop) on Mar 16, 2021 at 00:59 UTC

    Let's continue. :)

    Users who arrived shortly after monk number 10 in the root node (cinder_bdt):

    • BBQ - user since: Dec 24, 1999 at 00:09 UTC; last here: Apr 07, 2009; Experience: 2767 (update: 2905 as at Aug 1, 2023); 389 posts. The third non-insider Perl monk and the second international Perl monk (BBQ was residing in Brazil back then, later moving to San Francisco). A Perl Monks pioneer hero.
    • nathang - user since: Dec 24, 1999 at 00:45 UTC, last here: Feb 18, 2000; Experience: 0; 0 posts.
    • rob_from_ca - user since: Dec 24, 1999 at 00:51 UTC, last here: Dec 28, 1999; Experience: 0; 0 posts.
    • jdube - user since: Dec 24, 1999 at 09:11 UTC, last here: May 12, 2000; Experience: 12; 0 posts.
    • rask22 - user since: Dec 24, 1999 at 10:46 UTC, last here: Jan 30, 2000; Experience: 7; 3 posts.

    The standout pioneer non-insider Perl Monk is BBQ. Hailing from Brazil (making him the second international Perl monk, after yiango from Cyprus), he was by far the most active of these intrepid early explorers, selflessly spending most of his Christmas holidays in 1999 livening up this place. After making the first ever post in the Perl Monks Obfu section he stayed on for a further ten years. Accordingly, I feel he thoroughly deserves to be made a saint. Heartbreakingly, he is just 233 (update: 95 now) shy of the 3000 XP required for Saints in our Book ... yet if enough of us upvote his classic old nodes, he may finally reach the 3000 XP required for the sainthood he so richly deserves! ... especially as XP wasn't a part of this site from the start, as pointed out by another pioneer hero, chromatic.

    Update: Yay, BBQ finally made it to Sainthood on Aug 4, 2023 - Let's make BBQ a Saint!. Bod asked what has become of BBQ today. I don't know. All I've got is that he moved from Sao Paulo Brazil to San Francisco some time between 2000-2005. Unfortunately (unlike many of the other early Perl Monks) there is no BBQ user at Everything2 or Slashdot.

    Some historic BBQ posts:

    In another fascinating piece of early PM history, BBQ cautioned newbie trigger to be less trigger-happy:

    • RE: RE: Re: Static news system: "whoa! chill dude! you're posting several replies to your own posts! (and you managed to cut off your own question) :o)
    • ... to which, a confused trigger (the anonymonk making this reply) responds: "im new to this site, and i was surprised when my replies didn't come up, and it doesn't give a post confirmation and stuff...so i kept trying to post, and at first im not even sure if i was replying or starting a new....it got weird".

    The resourceful BBQ then made an astonishing save, somehow managing to work around an early PM bug to salvage newbie trigger's lost original question from history (Re: Static news system: "the poster managed to mangle his own post, but I backed up the history enough to salvage the original question below in italics..."). Heroic!

    Update: In another surprise, I see that thelenm, who I remember from the early Perl golf days, also "graduated from Hope College in Holland, Michigan". Mike is also a Scrabble expert ... and knows CmdrTaco in RL! (though isn't a fan his code ;-).

[reply]
Re: The First Ten Perl Monks
by jdporter (Chancellor) on May 15, 2019 at 16:38 UTC

    So here's the true list of Founding Users -- those accounts created before the site went "public". Most were associated with the standup of the site in some way. Others were their friends/coworkers.

    useridentityaccount created
    paco1999-10-26 21:12
    CowboyNealJonathan Pater1999-10-26 22:31
    CmdrTacoRob Malda1999-10-27 00:21
    dbrownDarrick Brown1999-10-28 03:37
    DiBonaChris DiBona1999-11-03 00:05
    vroomTim Vroom1999-11-12 00:53
    pschoonveldPatrick Schoonveld1999-12-02 06:56
    nateNathan Oostendorp1999-12-22 22:36
    dem bonesRyan Postma1999-12-23 16:49

    chromatic and robo joined a little later.

    Note that there were, of course, other accounts created during that timeframe: administrative and "non-player" accounts such as root, faq_monk, and Anonymous User, as well as test accounts by vroom and nate such as Perl Friar, sgtbaker, and Master Aalnan.

    I reckon we are the only monastery ever to have a dungeon stuffed with 16,000 zombies.
[reply]
Re: The First Ten Perl Monks
by jdporter (Chancellor) on May 14, 2019 at 19:29 UTC

    We've all heard of dibona - dibona monk - Chris Dibona. Whatever happened to him? He doesn't even appear to have an account!

    It turns out that his account was deleted via nuke. I have raised it from the tomb. Voila: DiBona. :-)

    I reckon we are the only monastery ever to have a dungeon stuffed with 16,000 zombies.
[reply]

      So I reached out to Chris D himself and asked what his involvement was. He says:

      My interaction was limited to a teeny bit of stuff and a photo for the monk pictures.

      I reckon we are the only monastery ever to have a dungeon stuffed with 16,000 zombies.
[reply]

      I'm happy you're working on the internals! I was wondering why the big jump in node ID's? From 1233781 to 11100000... we were getting pretty close to 1234567!

[reply]

        That was totally my bad. I had a node I needed to get "out of the way" for a minute, so I threw it to 11100000, not realizing that it would permanently reset the autoincrement sequence number in the database table. :-(

[reply]
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