[oak perl] Intro / looking forward to mtg

Mark Theodoropoulos mtheo at amural.com
Mon May 12 21:22:55 CDT 2003


Hi, all -- I recently joined the list, and George suggested writing an 
introduction here; I'm planning on attending tomorrow evening's meeting 
but figure I might as well say a word ahead of time.

In what now seems like an alternate universe, I actually downloaded (at 
superfast 1200 bps, of course!) & installed Perl 1.0 shortly after 
Larry Wall released it on Usenet in 1989 -- in a port for the *Amiga*, 
no less; I didn't end up using it, apart from some initial poking 
around. But I did get bitten by the bug about four years ago and now 
look for *any* possible excuse to use Perl.

I'll forgo the traditional List Of Bizarre Languages And Environments 
I've Dealt With Over The Years -- although, from my college years, APL 
on a time-shared Amdahl with IBM golf-ball terminals kinda stands out 
in my mind.... But I first got involved with Unix and the net in '82 or 
'83, and ever since then I seem always to have gravitated toward 
scripting languages, starting with shell programming and the long-gone 
Informer (Informix's database query language before everyone was forced 
to go SQL -- it was a way better relational language than SQL, dang 
it!), then years of various xBases and other database work, and now 
this wonderful playground donated by Larry Wall.

Everything about the Perl culture delights me no end, but I'm 
particularly appreciative of the ethic of generosity & playfulness, and 
the artistic temperaments Perl seems to attract -- especially lovers of 
music, an abiding passion of mine. In that light, even though it's my 
first meeting, I offered George a "Perl Culture"-type lightning talk 
for tomorrow; might as well jump right into the frying pan. So expect 
five minutes or less entitled "Arnold Schoenberg, Perl hacker?" (Note, 
of course, that offering a talk is not the same thing as promising a 
coherent talk.)

Looking forward to meeting you!

Mark Theodoropoulos
Berkeley


Oh, er, uh...
print&really_really_lazy;sub really_really_lazy{return 'JAPH'}



-- 
<mtheo>
producer / classics without walls
the anti-warhorse zone / www.amural.com
kusf 90.3fm / san francisco
the gurre-lieder project, june 8: 
http://www.amural.com/gl.html
mtheo at amural.com





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