14.2. The End
We close by expanding on a theme from Chapter 2. When we asked ourselves why some people work on their skills, exercise their curiosity, and try new things whereas others don't, the bottom line has to do with love. The reason people work constantly on improving Perl, with no direct compensation, is simply that they love programming and they love Perl.
More than any other language, Perl inspires this dedication because of the way its design embodies the principles that programming should be fun and the language should do what you want. Perl is a fun language.[1] Fun to use, to learn, and to improve. As we said in Chapter 1, a relative amateur can use Perl to solve real-world problems. Perhaps this fact best demonstrates the language's elegance.
[1] See Damian Conway's CPAN modules Coy.pm and Lingua::Romana::Perligata for quintessential examples of Fun with Perl.
Some people don't feel this way about Perl or even programming, and that's just fine: We (the authors) aren't artists, for that matter, which is why we didn't try to do the drawings for this book. That wouldn't have been fun. Sometimes we see people in this business who aren't motivated to explore or keep up their skills, and it's clear that they don't share the same love for it that we do. Our wish for them is that they find this passion somewhere, whether it's in this field or another; there's no dishonor in admitting that you've been a square peg in a round hole.
Some of the ways that people who have a love for Perl express it are
Golf: Competing with others to see how few characters they can code a solution in.
Bowling: Competing with others to see how long and arcane they can make the solution to a simple problem.
Obfuscation: The archetypal track meet for this is the Perl Journal's annual contest at http://www.tpj.com/contest.html. The quintessential obfuscation vehicle is the JAPH, a piece of code which prints “Just another Perl hacker,” albeit by the most impenetrable means possible.
If you love Perl too and are wondering where other people like you hang out, here are some suggestions:
There are Perl Monger groups (local user groups) all over the world. Access the Web site http://www.pm.org to find the one nearest you, and pick up neat Perl accessories.
The annual Perl conference run by O'Reilly & Associates takes place in the western United States in summer; see http://conference.perl.com/.
There are annual alternatives in the eastern United States and Europe, both called YAPC (Yet Another Perl Conference), run by volunteers. See http://www.yapc.org/America/ and http://www.yapc.org/Europe/.
The Fun with Perl mailing list is a place for people to send short pieces of code that embody some really clever or elegant way of solving a problem. Frequently the list plays golf with them. See http://www.technofile.org/depts/mlists/fwp.html.
A comprehensive listing of Perl mailing lists can be found at http://lists.perl.org and http://www.perl.org/support/mailing_lists.html.
The #perl channel on IRC is inhabited by purl, an autonomous agent that has a revolving collection of knowledge about Perl and other things. Humans have been known to hang out there too; see http://pound.perl.org/. Suggestion: Spend some time observing the channel to see what's acceptable to the culture there before saying anything.
A Perl portal with discussions, chat, and surveys can be found at http://www.perlmonks.org.
A news-oriented Perl portal is at http://use.perl.org.
If you want to find out more about Perl from some less publicized angles, try:
The history of Perl site at http://history.perl.org/.
News on the development of Perl 6 at http://www.perl.org/perl6/.