The Perl and Raku Conference in Houston

A little over twenty years ago, Ruth Holloway wrote her first Perl script, and the person who taught her how even said then that Perl was a “dead” language. Perl’s an awfully lively zombie! Travel along with Ruth through two decades of the joys and sorrows of making a living with Perl.

In 2001, Ruth learned Perl as a way to wrangle the pipe-delimited output of a proprietary database tool. Since then, she’s never stopped learning new things from Perl, working in multiple open and closed-source communities using the language. In this humorous, nostalgic, and thought-provoking talk, we’ll explore some the best—and the worst—that Perl has to offer. She’ll show that Perl can continue to have a life far past the time when so many say it is “dead,” and explore how we as current practitioners of the language can help encourage and mentor a new generation of Perl users and maintainers.