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throwanem • 07/31/2025 • 5 replies • view on HN

I believe Perl was first called "the duct tape of the Internet" about 20 years ago.

Ever tried to deal with 20-year-old duct tape?

Replies

masklinn • 08/01/2025

I’ve seen Julian when he gets pieces which have been duct taped. He’s not a happy camper.

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cestith • 08/01/2025

It’s also been called a Swiss Army chainsaw. I even have that t-shirt.

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DonHopkins • 08/01/2025

You can't fix broken mugs with duct tape. ;)

>Partway through, Jon Orwant comes in, and stands there for a few minutes listening, and then he very calmly walks over to the coffee service table in the corner, and there were about 20 of us in the room, and he picks up a coffee mug and throws it against the other wall and he keeps throwing coffee mugs against the other wall, and he says "we are fucked unless we can come up with something that will excite the community, because everyone's getting bored and going off and doing other things".

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Raku_Programming/Perl_History#...

Intermission: The Jon Orwant Mug-Throwing Incident in 2000

By 2000, it was evident that Perl needed an infusion of life:

"The [P5P / Perl Conference] meeting was originally a gathering of Chip Salzenberg, Jarkko Hietaniemi, Elaine Ashton, Tim Bunce, Sarathy, Nick Ing-Simmons, Larry Wall, Nat Torkington, brian d foy and Adam Turoff, brougt together to draft a constitution of sorts since the community seemed to be fragmenting. Jon showed up to the meeting late and found us talking about the community and started throwing things to express his discontent with how perl itself was stagnating, possibly even dying, and that we should be talking about reviving Perl. The cup incident was planned theatre from what I was told later. So, it was already a fait accompli but the tantrum was it's outing." [1]

https://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.packrats/2002/07/msg3.h...

[email protected] [[email protected]] quoth:

  *>I am interested to learn more about this incident.
  *>What this really the catalyst for the current Perl 6 development?
Well...calling it a catalyst may be too dramatic a word. The meeting was originally a gathering of Chip Salzenberg, Jarkko Hietaniemi, myself, Tim Bunce, Sarathy, Nick Ing-Simmons, Larry Wall, Nat Torkington, brian d foy and Adam Turoff, brougt together to draft a constitution of sorts since the community seemed to be fragmenting. Jon showed up to the meeting late and found us talking about the community and started throwing things to express his discontent with how perl itself was stagnating, possibly even dying, and that we should be talking about reviving Perl. The cup incident was planned theatre from what I was told later. So, it was already a fait accompli but the tantrum was it's outing.

  *>How many mugs were broken?
only one. 5 were thrown but they were tough :)

  *>Were they coffee mugs or coffee cups?
Coffee mugs. Standard hotel issue.

  *>What colour were they?
White.

  *>Did anyone keep some broken cups for later display in musuem?
No :)

  *>Did anyone photograph the incident or broken cups?
No :) Thank goodness as I'd hate to have a photo of me diving under the table.

https://web.archive.org/web/20110716115800/http://www.spider... is about as close to a photo of this as you'll find :)

e.

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andrewstuart • 07/31/2025

Perl was later called “executable line noise”.

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