One of the people who make me think that Perl is still worth knowing is chromatic, the ex-editor of O’Reilly’s perl.com. He’s one of the core team who are working to bring the Perl 6 Christmas, a vector of test infection, an extreme programming practitioner and, right now at least, no longer on Giles Bowkett’s christmas card list.

When I wrote the Healthcheck: Perl for (oh ghod, they’ve rebranded) The H, I mentioned that O’Reilly hadn’t announced Perl: The Good Parts yet. This was an allusion to something chromatic had said when I interviewed him for the article - at the time he was pitching that very book, but it seems he got knocked back.

So, he’s writing a book and a blog on Modern Perl, and a jolly good blog it is too. It reads like a manifesto in places, but it’s a good manifesto, so that’s okay. You should read him. If you’re a publisher, you should definitely talk to him. If you’re a ruby programmer, don’t be in the least bit surprised if he’s rude about the ruby community…