How long have you been using Perl?

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Re: How long have you been using Perl? by blue_cowdawg (Monsignor) on May 09, 2004 at 14:35 UTC
When I answer the question "how long have you been using Perl" folks often times don't believe me. There are folks out there that think Perl is only a few years old. My first introduction to Perl was when I worked for a very small semiconductor manufacturer that went out of business in the late eighties. It also conincides with my first introduction to UUCP and the Usenet. It is one of my earliest memories having to do with Unix System Administration and actually writing scripts and programs on the platform. I was responsible at the time for the care and feeding of an HP 9000 Model 840, and HP 9000 Model 820 and a wealth of HP9000 Model 3x0 systems all running early releases HPUX. Not to mention HP's bastard step child the HP 9000 Model 500 that we had in one of our labs. Over a 2400 baud modem connection to the University of Rutgers I read the newsgroups on USENET that had anything to do with programming in Unix, any source code for "neat" stuff for Unix and I learned at a frightening rate the trade of being a Unix professional. Well one day a set of "shar" files caught my attention and I remembered reading a news article in one of the USENET groups about this thing called "Perl." and how it would revolutionize Unix scripting. In unpacked/assembled/decoded the shar files (actually they were unencoded/compressed/shar files that were split IIRC) and ran Configure accepted defaults and it refused to compile. Lots of errors. Asked around the news groups and within a couple of days /usr/local/bin on my system (and other directories) had pieces of Perl installed in them. The first thing I noticed about the language was that I could stop piping one command to another to `cut` to `awk` to `sed` to.... oh you get the idea. I then went on a campaign of converting all my existing shell scripts to Perl and I haven't looked back since. I still write the occasional bash script but 99.999999% of my scripts are now in Perl. And that was a long time ago this all happened.... Excerpt from the timeline of Perl: 1987 UUNET is founded with Usenix funds to provide commercial UUCP and Usenet access. Originally an experiment by Rick Adams and Mike O'Dell Hmm, doubtful. The source code generally wasn't there when I needed it. -- Larry Wall when asked if he learned Perl from the perl source Perl 1.000 is unleashed upon the world. Some People take Perls' Birthday seriously. Behold as Randal sings Happy Birthday to Larrys' answering machine. The description from the original man page sums up this new language well. (18 December) NAME perl \| Practical Extraction and Report Language SYNOPSIS perl options filename args DESCRIPTION Perl is a interpreted language optimized for scanning arbi- trary text files, extracting information from those text files, and printing reports based on that information. It's also a good language for many system management tasks. The language is intended to be practical (easy to use, effi- cient, complete) rather than beautiful (tiny, elegant, minimal). It combines (in the author's opinion, anyway) some of the best features of C, sed, awk, and sh, so people familiar with those languages should have little difficulty with it. (Language historians will also note some vestiges of csh, Pascal, and even BASIC\|PLUS.) Expression syntax corresponds quite closely to C expression syntax. If you have a problem that would ordinarily use sed or awk or sh, but it exceeds their capabilities or must run a little fas- ter, and you don't want to write the silly thing in C, then perl may be for you. There are also translators to turn your sed and awk scripts into perl scripts. OK, enough hype.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
•Re: How long have you been using Perl? by merlyn (Sage) on May 09, 2004 at 23:00 UTC
When I started Perl, there was no newsgroup, mailing list, books, trainings, or even Matt's Script Archive! You kids all got it lucky! -- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker Be sure to read my standard disclaimer if this is a reply.	[reply]
Re: •Re: How long have you been using Perl? by fraktalisman (Hermit) on May 10, 2004 at 07:45 UTC
Very lucky! Without perlmonks I wouldn't have learned that quickly.	[reply]
Re: •Re: How long have you been using Perl? by hawtin (Prior) on May 11, 2004 at 07:48 UTC
I was lucky, by the time I started to learn Perl there was a brilliant book available (with a camel on the front as I recall) :-) ) Thanks merlyn	[reply]
Re: •Re: How long have you been using Perl? by Anonymous Monk on May 27, 2004 at 03:55 UTC
> When I started Perl, there was no newsgroup, mailing list, > books, trainings, or even Matt's Script Archive! You kids > all got it lucky! Show off! Len. Hack Perler	[reply]
Re: How long have you been using Perl? by defyance (Curate) on May 09, 2004 at 06:54 UTC
I don't use... I abuse Perl... Problem is, it hits back :( -- A conclusion is simply the place where someone got tired of thinking.	[reply]
Re: How long have you been using Perl? by allolex (Curate) on May 09, 2004 at 11:24 UTC
Have you noticed how two of these categories overlap? (1-3, 2-5). I have been using Perl for about two years now. I had played with it once before, but never had an application for it, but now I use Perl every day and can't possibly imagine how I could do anything without it. -- Damon Allen Davison http://www.allolex.net	[reply]
Re: Re: How long have you been using Perl? by Doraemon (Beadle) on May 12, 2004 at 07:17 UTC
Maybe you can create a Perl script to fix that! :)	[reply]
Re: How long have you been using Perl? by talexb (Chancellor) on May 09, 2004 at 19:19 UTC
I think I first heard about it in the late 80's, early 90's when I read about some guy having an encryption/decryption algorithim tattooed on his body, written in Perl. Since U.S. law prohibits the exportation of 'restricted munitions' (this code was an example), then theoretically this guy couldn't leave the country. I'd love to find that article again and see how faulty my memory is. My first steps were getting frustrated with writing "grind 'em up and spit 'em out" C programs, and moving to `awk` (for DOS, of course) for that work. That led fairly smoothly on to Perl scripts doing the same thing (taking memory model information and generating SQL), and from there it was a short leap into CGI programming during the Internet boom. Finally, hosting some web sites with pair Networks I read about Perl Monks in an interview with Damian Conway and immediately signed up here. I continue to learn. Alex / talexb / Toronto Life is short: get busy! Updated: Added two punctuation marks.	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Re: How long have you been using Perl? by t'mo (Pilgrim) on May 26, 2004 at 21:10 UTC
Here it is in French. I don't speak French, but the picture said it all. (The fish's version sounded a little funny in places.) Another thing I saw after googling for that was a reference to Wired '96, but I don't see where they have stuff archived.... ...every application I have ever worked on is a glorified munger...	[reply]
Re: Re: Re: How long have you been using Perl? by talexb (Chancellor) on May 27, 2004 at 05:32 UTC
Yeah, that's the story .. the photo I remember showed more of the guy (bald head, no shirt?) and less of the tatoo, but that is definitely the story. Glad to hear my memory is going on me. Very cool. Alex / talexb / Toronto Life is short: get busy!	[reply]
Re: How long have you been using Perl? by vek (Prior) on May 09, 2004 at 18:51 UTC
I think I started playing with Perl at the end of 1999. The other day I found one of the first Perl programs I ever wrote. I'm sure that we've all looked at code we wrote years ago and said to ourselves 'what the hell was I thinking?'. In fact I actually said that out loud when I saw that early program of mine. I think it was good to be reminded of that old code if only to serve as an indicator of how far I've progressed in the last 5 years. I know I've certainly learned a lot in that time and still continue to do so. -- vek --	[reply]
Re: How long have you been using Perl? by Abigail-II (Bishop) on May 10, 2004 at 10:30 UTC
Since February 1995. One morning I started with perl - it turned out be a perl4 that came with my Linux distro. Within an hour I wanted to use multidimensional arrays - I couldn't find it in the manual. So, I searched for a newsgroup, found one, started lurking, and quickly discovered there was already a 5.000, so I downloaded and installed that - and read all the manuals front to back. Didn't get access to my first Perl book before November 1996, when I bought Camel-II on my employers expense. Abigail	[reply]
Re: How long have you been using Perl? by zakzebrowski (Curate) on May 09, 2004 at 20:51 UTC
WARNING: Do not do the following, for it's horrible design! I wrote the following application design in my sophmore year of college (97)... I wrote a vb app that would periodically download a web page. I then launched a c++ program that would parse out meaningfull fields, and then using a 'text file' as a database. I would email (via yet another windows executable) various users the information from the file. I then wrote a simple perl program that would append 'to be processed' information to a file, that the vb script would read and update the database, which users could update from a web page. (Perl only handles the last step. Of course, perl could've done the whole thing...) (/me Shudders at the terrible design.) Surprisingly, it never went into production... ---- Zak - the office	[reply]
Re: How long have you been using Perl? by dragonchild (Archbishop) on May 10, 2004 at 12:16 UTC
I dropped out of college in August, 1995 and went to live with my girlfriend at PSU. I walked into the computer center and said "Anyone need a programmer?" One guy in the AgSci department said "Sure!" and I got handed a login, a chair, and the Llama book. (Built an entire appserver for $7.50/hr.) I bought the Camel on my dime about two weeks later. Unfortunately, I only used Perl for a year and stopped, until June 2000. Every job since has involved Perl intimately, and I've loved it. ------ We are the carpenters and bricklayers of the Information Age. Then there are Damian modules.... sigh* ... that's not about being less-lazy -- that's about being on some really good drugs -- you know, there is no spoon.* - flyingmoose I shouldn't have to say this, but any code, unless otherwise stated, is untested	[reply]
Re: How long have you been using Perl? by Limbic~Region (Chancellor) on May 10, 2004 at 14:12 UTC
Jul 11, 2002 at 01:53 EST It happens to be the day I started here at the Monastery as well. A cow orker had been telling me how easy it would be to do what I was doing in Korn shell scripts with Perl for a while so I decided to give it a shot. Turns out, the cow orker didn't know the first thing about Perl and was just spouting off at the mouth. I guess it was fortunate I was frustrated enough to listen to him. Many of the monks here have watched me "grow up". Most of them would say I still have a lot of growing left to do. I still don't consider myself a "programmer", but I sure do love to program. Cheers - L~R	[reply]
Re: Re: How long have you been using Perl? by one4k4 (Hermit) on May 18, 2004 at 20:22 UTC
You started on my 23rd birthday. Just in case you wanted to know another random fact. ;) One4k4 - perlmonks@poorheart.com (www.poorheart.com)	[reply]
Re: How long have you been using Perl? by DrHyde (Prior) on May 10, 2004 at 09:15 UTC
Hrrm, so right now there's two people saying "it was sort of my idea". Is there something we should know about Larry? Does he have an Evil Twin?	[reply]
Re: How long have you been using Perl? by adrianh (Chancellor) on May 10, 2004 at 14:26 UTC
I originally learned Perl in 1996. I was writing an e-commerce system and needed a mock server to test the C client with. I'd heard of people using Perl for IPC apps, and a quick look at the man pages convinced me that it would be quicker to mock it in Perl than it would in C. One Pink camel book later (I was using Perl 4 and didn't know about Perl 5) and Bob's your mother's brother. Curiously enough since Perl did the job the mock-server evolved into the full server and did several sterling years service before it was eventually rewritten in C by my successor.	[reply]
Re: How long have you been using Perl? by svsingh (Priest) on May 09, 2004 at 15:14 UTC
It depends on how you define using. I've been writing Perl code for about a year and a half now. Before that, I was using about half a dozen Perl books to stop my bookshelf from floating away. Glad I got around to finally sitting down with them and learning the language though.	[reply]
Re: How long have you been using Perl? by Anonymous Monk on May 10, 2004 at 08:02 UTC
here is my story :"), i was totaly working on windows (Delphi,ASP and sort of) nearly a couple of months before KDE comes out, I saw one book for linux and started reading it.. during the read i found this beatuful thing called awk and at the third day i had log statistic program (for IIS and ms-proxy), but then later in the book there was a short description of Perl and explanation that it is a bit harder but more powerfull, so I rewrote the program in Perl... on the third week I had log-statistic program which was able to handle different log formats (configurable), I was proud that it was doing compiltaion on the fly, HoH etc.. From these days it was clear that perl would be my language... great thanx to Larry and co	[reply]
Re: How long have you been using Perl? by valdez (Monsignor) on May 09, 2004 at 21:25 UTC
10th July 1995, purchase date of "Teach Yourself Perl in 21 Days". Ciao, Valerio	[reply]
Re: Re: How long have you been using Perl? by Smaug (Pilgrim) on May 10, 2004 at 10:04 UTC
4 January 2003 - Got given a copy of "Teach Yourself Perl in 21 Days" 26 January 2003 - Bought "Perl for Dummies" 9 June 2003 - Got introduced to Perl Monks and after some great help I felt confident enough to try "Teach Youself Perl ....." again.	[reply]
Re: How long have you been using Perl? by perlinux (Deacon) on May 10, 2004 at 10:51 UTC
Since 2003, May...I was studying Shell programming `for my $Linux`, but I was searching for something complete...and I've found Perl. `%My_Perl = ( 1 => "Learning Perl", 2 => "Mastering Regular Expression" 3 => "Programming Perl", 4 => "Perl for system Administration", now => "Web Client programming with Perl", next => "Mastering Algorithms with Perl", future => "Work with Perl...every day (this is not a book, it's a des +ire)" );` [download] And what about this?? A pleasure A treasure	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: How long have you been using Perl? by atcroft (Abbot) on May 12, 2004 at 09:33 UTC
I said 5-8 years, but my first introduction was in a Unix course in 1995. I wrote the one required program in the language, then basically put it out of my head, still trying to get a grasp on other nix admistratia (and nix generalia). In the spring of 1997, I was taking a systems programming course, trying to pass the last of my CS classes to try to graduate soon, and having a rough time of it. My C skills were kind of weak (at the time I was better in Pascal, although not that great in either), so two of my required programs to that point had not done so well. My professor (bless $her) had stated that we could write our programs in any language that was available on the school's main computer system (a VAX minicomputer, iirc), and expressed her concern about my recent programs after giving us the third of our (five proposed) major assignments, which would be due after returning from spring break. While trying to figure out what to do and trying to find what programming languages were available on the school's system by browsing its help system, I ran across a reference to perl, which I had also noticed on my linux system. Remembering a little about the language from the earlier course, I went to the school's library and checked out the only (iirc) book (Perl by Example) they had on the language at the time, renewed it just before going on spring break, and used it over the break to write the macro processor that was the third assignment (which helped me to pass the class, required for my degree). After that, I started using it more and more, especially as I realized how useful it was to me for doing system administration tasks, and was one of the few to use it in computer programming contest held by the school's computer club in the fall (including on a macro processor-like problem, which I was the first to complete successfully). Later, at my first job out of college, I used it to write a program to import user accounts for personal websites into a *nix-based server, then for more administration tasks. At my prior job, I used it heavily for administrative tasks, and while there found and became a part of this site. My current job was my first where coding was my primary task, and I've been lucky to have gotten to work primarily in and with perl. So to all those who helped make perl, this site, and even me what we are today, my most heartfelt and sincerest thanks.	[reply]
(merlyn knows) Re: How long have you been using Perl? by japhy (Canon) on May 12, 2004 at 22:47 UTC
I started using it in 1997. merlyn can attest to "tecmaster" from bergen.org logging onto EFnet #perl and asking questions that got me kicked. I was "Jeff, the teaching teen perl hacker", I believe. Why did I learn Perl? Because my school personal web site's "search engine" consisted of a textarea whose contents were emailed to me when the user clicked the "submit" button. I would then email them back telling them what pages were good for the content they were looking for. (Yecch.) So I learned Perl so I could write a search engine-type thing. That summer, I got a job at my high school writing admin scripts in Perl. I took off from there. I learned Perl sitting at Barnes & Noble reading the camel because I had no money to buy it; I didn't need a terminal near me to test things... I absorbed Perl pretty easily. Now, I believe I have somewhere around 10 Perl books. _____________________________________________________ Jeff`[japhy]`Pinyan: Perl, regex, and perl hacker, who'd like a job (NYC-area) `s++=END;++y(;-P)}y js++=;shajsj<++y(p-q)}?print:??;`	[reply]
Re: How long have you been using Perl? by Tomte (Priest) on May 10, 2004 at 13:48 UTC
The answer, sad but true, is not long enough... I had a look at some perl programs and smaller scripts here and then ever since I started to use linux at home in 1994, and despised the language as an optical nightmare, using bash and the normal unix toolchain and later python instead. After biting in the (apparently) sour apple and choosing slashcode as base for a community site planned for one of our customers two years ago, I finaly had to use and lern perl...(mind you, it was my decision :-) I never looked back, it's as simple as that; I do everything I possibly can justify in a java-warehouse in perl nowadays (everything thats system-administration, and a lot of data-im/ex-porting stuff). With a bit of time at my hands, I'll go and write a small tool for my wife, to help her manage her pupils and their grades; it's almost finished in my head, just by regularly reading perlmonks I know the modules I need, and a few of their respective pitfalls; Besides the beauty of perl I now do see, perlmonks is a real assett to perl. Thanks ;) regards, tomte An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself. -- Albert Camus	[reply]
Re: How long have you been using Perl? by cLive ;-) (Prior) on May 10, 2004 at 23:03 UTC
1-3yrs ------- 2-5yrs ------------ Is that a trick question for the intermediate Perl user? cLive ;-)	[reply]
Re: How long have you been using Perl? by andyf (Pilgrim) on May 12, 2004 at 07:52 UTC
I never took Perl seriously as a language and always thought it was just another tool like awk and sed. About 3 years ago a friend told me that he was running his entire company based on software written in a language called 'Perl'. "Programming language?" I thought, "C is a programming language" Anyway 3 years later I am addicted. It's the first language I look at for anything thats not realtime, safety critical, or numerical signal processing. Best of all I think it's the first General Purpose programming language. Secondly I think increasing cycle power has obviated the need for compiled speed in all but a few areas. It's a borg like language too because it assimilates the best of everything around it.	[reply]
Re: How long have you been using Perl? by Trag (Monk) on May 11, 2004 at 17:07 UTC
Hey, no fair. Larry Wall voted 3 times! ********************************************* print "Just another iconoclastic Perl hacker";	[reply]
Re: Re: How long have you been using Perl? by TimToady (Parson) on May 11, 2004 at 18:12 UTC
Well, I haven't voted yet, but had I voted, it'd have to be `>15` years, because it wasn't "sort of" my idea. `:-)`	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: How long have you been using Perl? by tmiklas (Hermit) on May 14, 2004 at 23:27 UTC
I have started my Perl adventure somewhere in 1995/1996 (can't remember). I have read some very first aricles in newspapers in Poland and thought, that Perl is a language designed for me :-) At first all of the people around were suprised... "What the hell are you doing?!" they asked - it was like a kind of magic. In one week all of my 9 servers started to report their work to my very first mobile phone. People told me that i am mad or something :-) but i had a great time. During time i was writing IRC bots with more and more sophiscated functions (one of the bots had even very simple NN/genetic algorithm to lear new badwords and kick/ban users according to the automatically calculated weight of a word). Some of the users wanted to kill me for that, but thanks to regular expressions, nobody could get a way around my badword function :-) During these years i did a lot of strange/crazy/funny/scary (pick as many as you want) things with perl and it was (and still is) great! Now i am writing code for fun, sometimes to do something more useful :-) Even now, all of my scripts are still working on all of my 16 servers :-) still reporting, looking (the servers) after each other and providing distributed security for all of 16 machines in diferent parts of Poland. Perl is the language, that gave me an opportunity to express myself in very creative and useful way. Thanks Larry! Thankyou my fellow-monks. Without you, my life would be very very sad. Greetz, Tom.	[reply]
Re: How long have you been using Perl? by bradcathey (Prior) on May 11, 2004 at 02:10 UTC
The 1-3 and 2-5 is for me, though should have been check boxes. The first time I "learned" Perl falls in the 2-5 category. The second time I began to learn Perl was about 9 months ago when I stumbled across the Monastery and got my coding butt kicked. And I'm thinking that within that 1-3 year range I'll have a handle on real Perl coding. But just when I think I'm getting it, a helpful monk reminds me I have a ways to go. As meryln points out, I'm one of the lucky ones. —Brad "A little yeast leavens the whole dough."	[reply]
Re: How long have you been using Perl? by PhilHibbs (Hermit) on May 11, 2004 at 11:29 UTC
My brother is a Unix sysadmin and support guy, and he told me that I'd probably enjoy Perl. This was probably back in about 1999. I read the Camel, but didn't do much with it. I'd used regexes in a rather good programmer's editor, so it wasn't that mind-blowing at the time. I re-discovered Perl by being given a large (4000+ installation, for a major auto manufacturer) Windows SQL database application to support. It had originally been written to run on Unix, then ported to Windows, and a lot of the support scripts were written in Perl. I wrote a couple of new ones, and was surprised at how easy and robust it was. Since then I've been using Perl as a tool language while doing my main work in other languages. I've made colossal time savings by writing scripts for my colleagues to use that make the job easier.	[reply]
Re: How long have you been using Perl? by tbone1 (Monsignor) on May 10, 2004 at 14:17 UTC
I'm glad it said 'using' Perl. There is actually some debate as to whether I 'program' Perl. I say 'yes', my cow-orkers tend to think 'no'. (This comment blatently and shamlessesly ripped off from P.G. Wodehouse's Uncle Fred.) -- tbone1, YAPS (Yet Another Perl Schlub) And remember, if he succeeds, so what. - Chick McGee	[reply]
I am not sure when I first saw Perl. by /dev/trash (Curate) on May 11, 2004 at 01:49 UTC
But it's been about 5 years or so. Not that I have been all that productive with it. I need ideas on stuff to do with Perl.	[reply]
Re: I am not sure when I first saw Perl. by jonadab (Parson) on May 11, 2004 at 18:57 UTC
need ideas on stuff to do with Perl. Write a full-featured operating system and GUI and suite of applications entirely in Perl -- something complete enough to replace Linux and Gnome. I'll help you beta test it for free. HTH.HAND `;$;=sub{$/};@;=map{my($a,$b)=($_,$;);$;=sub{$a.$b->()}}` `split//,".rekcah lreP rehtona tsuJ";$\=$;[-1]->();print`	[reply]
Re: Re: I am not sure when I first saw Perl. by /dev/trash (Curate) on May 17, 2004 at 19:15 UTC
I think that I'll pass on that and go about doing some EXIF tag parsing.	[reply]
Since May 2000 by jonadab (Parson) on May 11, 2004 at 18:40 UTC
`From: Jonadab the Unsightly One <jonadab@bright.net> X-RS-Flags: 0,0,1,1,0,0,0 X-RS-Sigset: -1 To: whee@mukappa.mknet.org Subject: bye Reply-to: jonadab@bright.net MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 8BIT Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 20:47:30 -0400 I just got the camel book on ILL; going into grue mode; see you in fourteen days.` [download] Well before the end of the two-week loan period I ordered my own copy of the book. By then I was writing code that I'd consider embarrasingly bad today, but at the time it did what I wanted. I'd never learned a language that quickly before. The rest is history. `;$;=sub{$/};@;=map{my($a,$b)=($_,$;);$;=sub{$a.$b->()}}` `split//,".rekcah lreP rehtona tsuJ";$\=$;[-1]->();print`	[reply] [d/l]
Re: How long have you been using Perl? by arthas (Hermit) on May 22, 2004 at 08:30 UTC
I began in Perl sometime around 1996, trying to modify some script I found on the web. Those were my first attempts at web coding. Before that I was into Pascal programming. Perl was love at first sight, although it marked my way into web programming which I don't love that much. I'm still hopeful I can be coding something else soon or after, always in Perl of course. ;-) Thanks PerlMonks for being such a great community! Michele.	[reply]
Re: Re: How long have you been using Perl? by Anonymous Monk on May 23, 2004 at 16:16 UTC
351169	[reply]
Re: How long have you been using Perl? by Anonymous Monk on May 12, 2004 at 08:55 UTC
Must have been around 1996, when I found a book with a camel/dromedar at the cover. Since then I got addicted to perl. Still being far form perfect, I gradually switched from "Programming Perl" to "Thinking Perl". Gnork	[reply]
Re: How long have you been using Perl? by stefp (Vicar) on May 18, 2004 at 12:31 UTC
I use perl since at least 1989 if I judge by some of my advocacy postings. But I can't find perl code written by me before 1991 when I did post to soc.culture.french a script that listed all the words including all the vowels from a French dictionnary. It deals with diacritic characters: perl -e 'while(<>) { if(m/y/&&m/u/&&m/o/&&m/i/&&m/a/&&m/e/){ s/'\''`//;push(@a,$_);} } print sort{length($a)<=>length($b)\|\|$a cmp $b;}@a' It was posted as a one liner but I broke it in many lines because I hate code that obliges you to horizontally scroll a page. Today, I would use modifiers and drop parenthesis here and there but would not write it very differently. -- stefp	[reply]
Re: How long have you been using Perl? by dwhitney (Beadle) on May 18, 2004 at 18:37 UTC
Let's see, I was taking a Unix tools class at the university in 1993. I hated LISP, C/C++ was such a pain and TCL/Tk was only ok. Then, on a Thursday, the TA said: "OK, now let's look at Perl..." and we all got these pink books, with this funny camel on it. Ever since, I've used perl for everything under the sun, from assorted network monitoring, CGIs (before CGI.pm), assorted ISP/IT stuff, ad hoc scripts and too much XML stuff to go into... Thanks Larry! Thanks Tom! Thanks Jon! You guys have helped me more than you know!	[reply]
Re: How long have you been using Perl? by bibo (Pilgrim) on May 12, 2004 at 14:01 UTC
I started playing sysadmin on a sun/sgi/pc network in 86, and found right away that I liked using perl to do the dirty work for me. I built more and more front ends to ugly existing programs (and quite a few ugly C programs I wrote) for the poor users. And it was great. I remember the revelation of the PC versions of Perl, and how I wouldn't have to write any crummy batch scripts anymore either!	[reply]
Re: How long have you been using Perl? by imcsk8 (Pilgrim) on May 15, 2004 at 20:13 UTC
i use perl since 1998, and since the first time i've loved it. I remember i started to work using linux boxes as mail servers to the faculties at the university of chihuahua and the script to add the users was in perl, after using it a couple of times i opened the file to see the script, and that was it, i was hooked. since that day i've been enjoying perl and the great culture that sorrounds it. i'm almost finished my masters degree and every (well almost every) piece of code i've wrote in the process has been in perl. this language pushes yo to learn more every time and be a better programmer (and heck, why not, as consecuence a better human being ;-). i sould stop now 'cause i'm getting a little romantic :-P ignorance, the plague is everywhere --guttermouth	[reply]
Re: How long have you been using Perl? by fluxion (Monk) on May 18, 2004 at 23:41 UTC
I brought a small Perl book that I had laying around on a road trip about a year ago (God I'm a nerd). I got hooked when I tried out some simple programs I thought up while I was away and they actually worked. Roses are red, violets are blue. All my base, are belong to you.	[reply]
Re: How long have you been using Perl? by parkprimus (Sexton) on May 19, 2004 at 15:57 UTC
The first language that I learned was C (like many programmers )and I hated it. Started working and going to school for network engineering and fell in love with Linux. Well every flavor of linux that I know of comes with perl. And that is when I discoverd the power of perl. Perl is a great language for network management and the such. Will never program with any other language on any other OS other than PERL and LINUX.	[reply]
Re: Re: How long have you been using Perl? by softworkz (Monk) on May 19, 2004 at 19:12 UTC
I've been tattoed to Perl since it was offered as a special problems course in college 4yrs ago (I'm glad I took it, nice vacation from c++). The book used was to "teach yourself Perl in 21 days". Since then I have most of the Perl stable. learning Perl programming Perl learning Perl on win32 systems Perl for system administration mastering Perl expressions Perl cookbook network programming with Perl data munging with Perl win32 Perl scripting Thanks, Larry, Damian, Tom, Randal, and all the others.	[reply]
Re: Re: How long have you been using Perl? by flyingmoose (Priest) on May 19, 2004 at 21:22 UTC
Good luck with those non-trivial perl modules. Perl and C go quite well hand in hand, thanks to XS, and well, of course you have to wonder what Perl might have been written in....	[reply]
Re: How long have you been using Perl? by RolandGunslinger (Curate) on May 13, 2004 at 13:15 UTC
While I've been using Perl off an on since 1997, I got serious in Sept 2003. I started working with tutorials I found online, joined PerlMonks, and started finding excuses for using Perl in my admin tasks on Win32 servers. Got alot of weird looks from my coworkers when I told them I was using Perl, but I didn't care. Because of Perl I was learning to enjoy coding again. In October 2003, got the Llama book, Learning Perl 2nd Edition, and Advanced Perl (panther). In the last couple of months however, I've gotten my admin stuff under control and therefore haven't done much Perl. Other interests are pulling me in different directions, but Perl has a very honored place in my toolbelt, my mindset, and my heart.	[reply]
Re: How long have you been using Perl? by reb00ted (Initiate) on May 14, 2004 at 08:53 UTC
I'm not using Perl , Perl is using me for 4 months :) , and I hope I'm learning fast ... :)	[reply]
Re: How long ... by Paulster2 (Priest) on May 21, 2004 at 12:11 UTC
I've been using for the past year or so. I've tried to quit, honestly. In and out of rehab. It's been a terrible year. I don't know what to do. My wife wants a divorce, the kids want to disown me....Hey, wait.....this isn't the oxycontin abusers page?? Ooops. Paulster2 You're so sly, but so am I. - Quote from the movie Manhunter.	[reply]
Re: How long have you been using Perl? by kiat (Vicar) on May 21, 2004 at 15:13 UTC
Ah, I actually don't remember. Maybe it was 1999 or perhaps 2000. Anyway, I didn't really start coding in perl right away. I had one of Matt Wright's script - formmail.pl - and got it to work with some minor changes, mainly configuration changes. But I wasn't confident I could handle perl. I looked at some parts of the script and said to myself - I don't think I'll ever know what that is doing! Btw, programming was the last thing I would dream of doing, because I never had any formal education in it. I then got acquinated with more free scripts from the Net and started playing with them. I guess that sort of started my journey... It was a small step here and a small step there. I started with small scripts to parse text files. When these worked, my confidence grew. Sure the code sucks but it works :) I've read the 3rd Edition of Perl Programming probably 5-7 times. I never really finished the book - I think I stopped somewhere in the middle. Each time I read, certain concepts that seemed hard to grasp at first became clearer so the reading also became more enjoyable... Then I discovered perlmonks. This place makes all the difference to my perl experience. I learned new and better ways of doing things over the years. Gradually, I grew more comfortable with perl and what appeared impossible to do at the beginning now becomes doable :) Great thanks to all who make this community possible and of course, zillion thanks to perl's creator Larry Wall and all who gave life to perl.	[reply]
Re: How long have you been using Perl? by Chainsaw (Friar) on May 11, 2004 at 15:14 UTC
Well I know some of perl, but I don work with it, is more like "I wanna know", that's why I select between 0 and 1 year. Eventough I know about perl since 2001. Actually I know don't know the most I want to but I'll. God help me to see the other face of the coin. And prevent me from accusing of betrayal those who don't think just as I do.	[reply]