to do then now would be retro, to do then then was very nowtro
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Perl

since 1987 (earliest usage recorded on this site was 1985)

Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Perl was originally developed by Larry Wall in 1987 as a general-purpose Unix scripting language to make report processing easier. Perl borrows features from other programming languages including C, shell scripting (sh), AWK, and sed. The language provides powerful text processing facilities without the arbitrary data length limits of many contemporary Unix tools, facilitating easy manipulation of text files. It is also used for graphics programming, system administration, network programming, applications that require database access and CGI programming on the Web. Perl is nicknamed "the Swiss Army chainsaw of programming languages" due to its flexibility and adaptability.

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Technology Timeline Graph
 
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
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1992
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2012
rragan
vangale
joemcmahon
dfan
ironfort
gnat
ndw
liza
bmaxwell
AndyC
jtauber
boutell
af
MarkofCain
mpirnat
takitimu
mjhagen
vitaliyf
dabeaz
growe
eMBee
zeroaltitude
jjames
enki
ashugg
thraxil
bob
daddy
supakoo
wilane
kan
kevinpet
hexdump42
RossP
dl
brucehoult
frankwiles
reed
jkocherhans
carljm
westonruter
streetcleaner
bg4
jamesotron
Cema
benjaminws
robhudson
David
arowla
givas
r1chardj0n3s
pydanny
adders
jcarbaugh
jbeigel
twhitton
jeffself
nathans
bittercoder
lambacck
gklein
sfaruque
danceswithvowels
tartley
eykd
marcelor
cpt_ahag
davisagli
daniellindsley
mowens
vvarp
thumper
Bunglebogs
shiny
mfandreas
paltman
Sitwon
mwalling
sceptreofjudah
honzakral
ShawnMilo
rogerclark
drakkos
eddymul
pmclanahan
ghoseb
CerealBoy
cdeblois
sbastn
passy
zellyn
moriogawa
jefftriplett
asenchi
sli
quakehead
Kanru
davidpaccoud
floyd
eculver
ubersoldat
sjaekel
adamcik
iamteem
nsmgr8
NX172
natevw
dan
krisse2
binarydud
greyfade
amackera
Swizec
nbprithv
joshontheweb
bkonkle
Raisapius
sdhamilton
mantovani
xhae
thaostra
gridaphobe
timus
andyrak
mallipeddi
CrociDB
perimosocordiae
MechanisM
rragan - 28 years
vangale - 13 years
joemcmahon - 26 years
dfan - 9 years
ironfort - 23 years
gnat - 21 years
ndw - 21 years
liza - 9 years
bmaxwell - 20 years
AndyC - 2 years
jtauber - 5 years
boutell - 12 years
af - 5 years
MarkofCain - 18 years
mpirnat - 6 years
takitimu - 18 years
mjhagen - 3 years
vitaliyf - 6 years
dabeaz - 18 years
growe - 18 years
eMBee - 3 years
zeroaltitude - 18 years
jjames - 18 years
enki - 8 years
ashugg - 18 years
thraxil - 17 years
bob - 17 years
daddy - 17 years
supakoo - 17 years
wilane - 17 years
kan - 1 years
kevinpet - 12 years
hexdump42 - 2 years
RossP - 4 years
dl - 16 years
brucehoult - 16 years
frankwiles - 14 years
reed - 16 years
jkocherhans - 2 years
carljm - 6 years
westonruter - 15 years
streetcleaner - 4 years
bg4 - 15 years
jamesotron - 3 years
Cema - 15 years
benjaminws - 15 years
robhudson - 4 years
David - 15 years
arowla - 12 years
givas - 3 years
r1chardj0n3s - 3 years
pydanny - 1 years
adders - 14 years
jcarbaugh - 4 years
jbeigel - 4 years
twhitton - 14 years
jeffself - 6 years
nathans - 13 years
bittercoder - 2 years
lambacck - 3 years
gklein - 13 years
sfaruque - 13 years
danceswithvowels - 13 years
tartley - 1 years
eykd - 13 years
marcelor - 5 years
cpt_ahag - 8 years
davisagli - 5 years
daniellindsley - 5 years
mowens - 12 years
vvarp - 2 years
thumper - 3 years
Bunglebogs - 12 years
shiny - 12 years
mfandreas - 5 years
paltman - 2 years
Sitwon - 11 years
mwalling - 3 years
sceptreofjudah - 11 years
honzakral - 3 years
ShawnMilo - 11 years
rogerclark - 11 years
drakkos - 1 years
eddymul - 11 years
pmclanahan - 7 years
ghoseb - 1 years
CerealBoy - 10 years
cdeblois - 10 years
sbastn - 1 years
passy - 6 years
zellyn - 1 years
moriogawa - 10 years
jefftriplett - 10 years
asenchi - 10 years
sli - 10 years
quakehead - 9 years
Kanru - 9 years
davidpaccoud - 4 years
floyd - 9 years
eculver - 2 years
ubersoldat - 3 years
sjaekel - 3 years
adamcik - 8 years
iamteem - 1 years
nsmgr8 - 1 years
NX172 - 7 years
natevw - 3 years
dan - 6 years
krisse2 - 6 years
binarydud - 1 years
greyfade - 6 years
amackera - 5 years
Swizec - 2 years
nbprithv - 5 years
joshontheweb - 1 years
bkonkle - 2 years
Raisapius - 5 years
sdhamilton - 5 years
mantovani - 5 years
xhae - 5 years
thaostra - 4 years
gridaphobe - 4 years
timus - 4 years
andyrak - 4 years
mallipeddi - 2 years
CrociDB - 3 years
perimosocordiae - 3 years
MechanisM - 3 years
1985–
1987–
When the Cray Y-MP was delivered at NASA, the sales engineer suggested that instead of having to learn C, ack, sed, and shell, I should just learn Perl. It's been my primary language ever since then. First use was support code for the Convex Unitree system at NASA; switched over to Web programming, and then branched out into QA automation. Now working at blekko.com ... doing something I can't talk about yet. But still Perl!
1987–1999
Don't remember the exact year but it was when Perl 2.0 was first sent across Usenet on comp.lang.sources. Was blown away by how much easier it made system level programming. Later after having to use it full time for a job was blown away by how hard it was to maintain. Have tried to avoid it since.
1990–
1990–1998
1992–
Picked up Perl in the early days of the web. It was used to reformat text into HTML, and of course in the elegant Plexus web server. Back then, before CGI, we got dynamic web pages by hacking the web server to do different things based on the URL. It's obviously better to do that in Perl than in C, so Perl took off. I moved to the US, helped tchrist with the FAQ which lead to the cookbook which lead to training and conferences and YAPC and perl6 and The Perl Foundation and all sorts of wonderful things. Perl was the first time I saw a community coalesce. There's something magic when people who know each other online meet for the first time in person. I've seen it happen at other conferences since, but the early days of The Perl Conference were special because it was the first time I'd seen it happen, and I was part of it. Love the Perl community just as I love Perl, warts and all. I use other programming languages from time to time, hang out in other communities from time to time, but Perl and I know each other the best.
1992–
1993–2001
Migrated to Python.
1993–
1994–1998
Used Perl 4 a lot and Perl 5 a bit. Haven't touched it since I learnt Python, though.
1994–1998
I was young, I needed the money.
1994–1995
Dabbled with Perl in the early days of CGI on webservers. I hate it with a passion.
1994–2005
I wrote "CGI Programming in C and Perl," which was a PHP 4 book, but not bad overall. I also wrote PerlMUD, which would probably be in wider use if I hadn't had the unmitigated gall to charge a whopping $25 (later $10) for registration (even though you had the source already with your initial download). Geez, did I make any money off that? Only... oh, nearly $2,000, hey not bad. I liked Perl for quick and dirty stuff. I never really liked Perl as a higher-level language. Perl's wacky combination of assembler-like looseness ("want your parameters? UNPACK THEM YOURSELF") and APL obtuseness ("pick the right punctuation mark or DIE") never sat well with me. PHP is a great relief from the latter. And I gather Perl 6 is moving away from that as well, but probably stuck in the mud of being too much like Ruby and Python to bother with.
1995–
This is the language I learned to program in, and despite its highly write-only nature, I will always like it.
1995–2000
I have not touched Perl since discovering Python and, to some degree, PHP.
1995–
Have written a few CGI script handlers in Perl, but it's an absolutely vile language. Its main purpose seems to be to keep Larry Wall's ego inflated - his book on Perl is filled with page after page of "see how much smarter than you I am" for being able to write Perl code that can navigate a toaster to Jupiter in only 2 lines and uses only obscure punctuation symbols.
1995–
Used it for cgi-bin scripts in a weather app I wrote ( SGI graphics, web UI ).
1995–
I was called crazy by everyone I met who had a job in software for obsessing about Perl 4. I still don't know how I found it or how it found me. Now people call me crazy for obsessing about Perl 6.
1995–1997
self learned, did some scripts with it, didn't really appreciate the language until i got more proficient at shell usage years after i stopped using perl
1995–
Wrote the first Swig modules for both Perl 4 and Perl 5. Wouldn't say that I'm fluent, but I still use it every now and then--mainly to maintain some wiki software that's written in Perl.
1995–
Only began teaching myself Perl 4 from the "Learning Perl" book when I found it too difficult to implement associative arrays in /bin/sh
1995–2002
1995–
1995–1997
1995–2000
1996–
Perl5, mostly for text processing and not for web use. Still use it, mostly where I've gotta maintain some existing project.
1996–
That's the linguist part of me, hey Larry, I do more of a One Trivial Way To Do It
1996–
1996–2007
1996
1996–
The second best...evar!
1996–1997
1996–
1997–2010
1997–
Learned for a consulting job. Still write at least one 1-liner every day.
1997–
1997–
1997–2000
Never really learnt this - but pretty much all self-hosted scripts (remember the term "CGI Script?") at the time were in Perl.
1998–2003
My first dynamic-language love. I remember in college taking a look at an mbox-parser a friend was struggling for hours to write in C and telling him "I could do that in Perl in ten minutes." He called the challenge; I locked my door and had it done in 9:37. Haven't used it much since I found Python.
1998–
My programming mother tongue. I ate up that Perl For Dummies book I bought at Barns & Noble in Federal Way, Washington! First project? RuterSearch: http://weston.ruter.net/projects/rutersearch/ I still use Perl a lot of text processing and for various system utilities. PHP has replaced Perl for web development, which I hope to replace with Python ASAP.
1998–2001
1998–
Use it when it is the right tool for the job. Implemented a B2B ordering system for a company internship while in college.
1998–2000
For a while there I was seduced by the dark side, but she doesn't know how to treat you right.
1998–
1998–
I started programming in Perl, was hopelessly devoted to it for years.
1998–2001
Perl & CGI. Yeehaw!
1998–
1998–1999
1998–2009
Started with the camel book back in the days of CGI. Revisited Perl in a big way for building major database-backed web applications at Rentrak. It helps to have source filters which make it so you don't have to shift your arguments off of @_.
1998–2000
1999–
Used it on and off since 1999, first at University and then on random projects since. Probably stop using it and move to Python or something else soon.
1999
Dabbled with Perl. Loved the regular expressions but revisiting my work months later made me realize a flaw of regex. Or perhaps I just wrote spaghetti code?
1999–2002
1999–
Ah, the old aptly titled swiss army chainsaw. The first truly agile language I've ever learned. Coming from C to Perl was like going from a match to a flame thrower. Probably not the best choice for large applications, but that never stopped me. I still use Perl to tear through text but not much else these days.
1999–2002
Perl was the first "real" programming language that I learned. I wrote a bunch of CGI applications for a web site that I worked on... stuff like guestbooks, forums, and rudimentary databases backed by flat files.
1999–2001
2 years too much. See also Java.
2000–2007
My language of choice when I majored in computational linguistics, but switched to Python a few years ago and am even happier now...:-D
2000–
2000–
Still roxors for regex! I used perl as a regex generator to edit 10K+ login scripts.
2000–
2000–2002
2000–2004
Black days. Enjoyed the switch from Bash to Perl but finally I ended up going to the dark side of his magic.
2000–2001
Taught myself Perl while studying - worked on a project to provide a Perl based platform for converting ASP based "commerce server" applications across to Perl (replicated the whole commerce server pipeline etc.)
2000–
2000–2005
One of my favorite languages. The first "scripting" language that I used because I was learning Linux and what else was there in the late 90's? Since have moved on to Python.
2000
2000–
2001–2002
2001–
2001–2002
2001–
2001–2005
Learned it in one evening spent with the Camel book trying to build a Pig Latin web filter. Still holds a soft spot in my heart.
2001–
graduated, and became a perl programmer straight away
2001–2003
Needed perl for work. Once I found python, I never touched perl again.
2001–2005
2001–2005
2002–2004
My language of choice for more complicated scripts, abandoned if for python.
2002
Played with it a little for building server side web apps for an early web page. Hate it with a passion.
2002–
2002–
After doing a lot of VBScript (ASP, VB6, etc.), I fell in love with Perl's raw power and efficiency. The regex integration is fantastic, and nothing beats it for one-liners to process text files. Throw it in the mix with a bunch of piped-together Unix commands for a remarkably powerful impromptu parser.
2002–
2002–
2002–
2002–2004
2003–
Did a bit of Perl programming for a company. Mostly small scripts and web crawlers.
2003–
Merely flirted and wrote a few scripts.
2003
Just for one project. Loved the community, though.
2003
First scripting language. Messed up my brain badly. But I love it for that. Had to quit though. It was not Perl, it was me. I was not ready for it.
2003–
2003–2009
Had to use it for $work. Liked it at first, then found Python. Haven't looked back.
2003–
2003
2003–
First job doing web applications and it's been a part of each job following.
2003–2008
2003–
2004–2007
Did a bit of scripting and text processing. Regex and CPAN are great but I never got use to Perl magical syntax. I definitly replaced Perl with Python.
2004–
All hackers use perl! Was turned off by all the single character text operators, but I got over it. Yep, it's the 800-pound swiss army chain saw of programming languages. Who needs other tools if they've got perl?
2004–
2004–
2005
Too much cryptic, will not touch it again.
2005–
Great in the right hands, horrible in the wrong ones (just like any other language I guess).
2005–2007
2005
2005–2006
2005–2007
You'll like Perl 'til you meet Python.
2006–2008
Used for several big projects in my first programming job, so it became my go-to scripting language whenever I gave up on plain shell scripts (i.e. every time I started anything in Bash).
2006–
2007–
2007–
2007–
Never properly learned Perl until I needed it at work one day. I very quickly noticed that my own (novice) code was more compact and clear than any of the PHP I'd ever written. My first clue that my gut feelings about PHP were right.
2007
2008–2009
Used for scripting while in a strict corporate IT environment that blocked the use of Python.
2008–
USING CATALYST FRAMEWORK TO BUILD POWERFUL WEB APPLICATIONS QUICKLY, EFFICIENTLY WHILE FOLLOWING BEST PRACTICES.
2008
Took a couple of classes with Perl in University. I liked it, but it is a bit primitive compared to other modern languages. don't use it anymore.
2008–
Wrote some text processing scripts for a linux box, much prefer python.
2008–
2008–
Wrote a translator for a packet stuffing language while working for a networking company. My brain still hurts.
2008–2009
2008–
Hooray for regular expressions! I'm still in the process of learning this. OOP in Perl feels weird, though.
2008–
2009–
2009–2010
Learnt Perl to maintain a bunch of scripts at work.
2009–
Wanted to learn it before, but discouraged by others saying it resembled "line noise". After finally trying it, it's safe to say that Perl is actually quite readable yet compact if one takes the right approach. I like it.
2009–
2009–
2010–
I'm still learning it.
2010–
2010–
I THINK THAT WAS MY FRIST LANGUAGE FOR WEB DEVELOPMENT.
lots of stuffs
Great syntax, very powerful.
Yeah, I still like the language (cept for pre-Moose OO) and the stuff in CPAN,

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