On Mon, Nov 19, 2012 at 05:29:29PM +0000, Dave Cross wrote: > > 1/ Technical > > What CPAN modules deserve to be mentioned as part of Perl's history? > Which Perl infrastructure projects are (or were) important? Are > there any other technical things that need to be covered?
Back before there were modules: the earliest version I used (3.something) came with *2p utilities that were useful in their own right and enabled bootstrapping knowledge from find, sed and especially in my case awk: http://code.activestate.com/lists/perl-advocacy/1671/ If a2p hadn't existed (and installed right alongside perl) I'm not sure whether I'd have started using Perl. I think the early days of comp.lang.perl (before the split) with informed, entertaining & helpful commentary from some of stalwarts was also key in the rise of Perl. Best wishes -- Chris Benson