Perl.com
The source for Perl
A Cup of Coffee, Reliable Transportation, and Gore-Tex
Ubiquitous programming language Perl is the go-to option for software developers
Quick, think of a few items that you rely on that are also so ubiquitous you don't really think about them until they're not at hand. A good cup of coffee might be one, reliable transportation another. And when the wind and rain kicks up, a Gore-Tex jacket is just what the doctor ordered.
Now ask a plumber this same question, and one of the things he might mention is that his life would be mighty difficult without a steady supply of duct tape around. Its adhesiveness, flexibility and tensile strength make it the go-to solution for any number of situations. Ask a software developer the same question, and the answer might be the programming language Perl—often called the duct tape of the internet.
Perl is used for mission-critical projects in the public and private sectors because of its stability across platforms. Created by Larry Wall, it is open source software that consolidates the best features from other languages and, due to its text-manipulation capabilities and rapid development cycle, is perhaps the most popular web development language.
After all, what's a little data munging among friends?
O'Reilly Media has a longtime commitment to Perl, which is one reason Perl.com has access to content from such luminaries as Larry Wall, Damian Conway, Mark Jason Dominus, and others. It is partially their presence that has established Perl.com as the primary site for information about Perl 6 and the future of Perl.
Each month the site serves an average of 900,000 pages to 230,000 unique visitors. A broad range of articles moves across the experience spectrum to take the novice to intermediate level, as well as in-depth technical articles for the more experienced programmer.
Editorial Content
In addition to the content areas noted on the left nav-bar, coverage includes articles such as: "Larry Wall's State of the Onion;" "Web Basics with LWP;" "Data Munging for Non-Programming Biologists;" "Making Menus with wxPerl GUI Toolkits;" "Perl Internalization," and much more.
Source Code: Chromatic is the technical editor of the O'Reilly Network, specializing in programming, Linux, and open source development. As the author of Extreme Programming Pocket Guide and the co-author of Perl Testing: A Developer's Notebook, he's also been known to evangelize to co-workers about better development practices. In addition, he has occasionally produced startling numbers of test suites—and a few testing modules—for projects including Perl 5, Perl 6, Pugs, and Parrot. Someday he would like to claim some responsibility for improving the quality of all software by writing articles, producing good code, giving interesting talks, and developing better tools.
He lives just west of Portland, Oregon with two cats, a creek in his backyard, and a park one house over. It's too late for him to choose a more realistic-sounding pen name.
“Testing proves a programmer's failure. Debugging is the programmer's vindication.”—Boris Beizer
