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Perl Conference 2.0
Field notes from the O'Reilly Perl conference
9/14/98

by Edward Piou

Recently, Perl developers and users congregated for the Perl Conference 2.0, a technical conference covering the language some have called the "duct tape of the Internet." The conference took place August 17-20 in San Jose, California (the next Perl conference will be August 21-24, 1999 in Monterey California).

In addition to giving a concentrated dose of Perl theory and application over the space of a few days, the gathering provided an opportunity for members of the far-flung "Republic of Perl" to mingle, trade ideas, and discuss where the future of the language lies.

In a keynote speech sprinkled with wide-ranging cultural references (including the Lord of the Rings, Ian Fleming's James Bond novels, and the spread of Christianity) Larry Wall, creator of the Perl language, likened the Republic of Perl to an onion. With himself at the center as creator, Wall described the Onion as radiating outwards in a number of layers. Surrounding the center are the "inner ringers," people who were early adopters of the language, and have made major contributions (such as working on the development of the core language itself, writing books to bring others into the Onion, or writing some of the more popular Perl modules). Farther out are the "outer ringers"—those who came along later, and use Perl in their everyday lives or jobs. In between are the people who are neither inner nor outer ringers—people who have perhaps released bits of code for others to use, but have not devoted as much time to developing the language itself.

In this report, I'll try to give you an idea of the pieces of the Onion I saw at the conference. Let's start with tutorial and classes: The Inner Ring.

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