YAPC::NA 2007
Here I am in Houston at my first Perl conference. It’s a cross between Woodstock and MIT (though our host is the University of Houston).
Larry Wall, the creator of Perl, just finished his keynote talk. Larry really is an evangelist of free thought, a metaphor which can be seen extending all the way from Perl’s language design through his cultural musings. The son and grandson of preachers, Larry has founded his own new cult, one that has adopted a distinctly anti-dogmatic motto: TMTOWTDI (There’s More Than One Way To Do It). At one point early in their marriage, Larry and his wife were training to be missionaries, and he joked that newlyweds in this occupation couldn’t resist joking about the missionary position. TMTOWTDI, even for evangelists.
He also pointed out that the job of a missionary is not to erect a little church with a white steeple in the midst of a completely different culture, but to deliver only the core ideals to the community. TMTOWTDI.
I can’t do his whole keynote justice here, other than to pass on that he announced Perl 6 would be released this Christmas.
Update: as it turns out, “release by X-Mas” is a running Perl 6 joke. Yeah, they’ll probably get me next year, too.