Wall’s fundamental assertion—there is more than one way to do it—continues to resonate with developers. Perl allows programmers to embody the three chief virtues of a programmer: laziness, impatience, and hubris. Perl was originally designed for utility, not beauty. Perl is a programming language for fixing things, for quick hacks, and for making complicated things possible partly through the power of community. This was a conscious decision on Larry Wall’s part: In an interview in 1999, he posed the question, “When’s the last time you used duct tape on a duct?”

Larry Wall released Perl 1.0 to the comp.sources.misc Usenet newsgroup on December 18, 1987. In the nearly 30 years since then, both the language and the community of enthusiasts that sprung up around it have grown and thrived—and they continue to do so, despite suggestions to the contrary!

Opensource.com have a fun write-up on the history of Perl, which has come a long way since its unveiling on Usenet 30 years ago today!



Adafruit has had paid day off for voting for our team for years, if you need help getting that going for your organization, let us know – we can share how and why we did this as well as the good results. Here are some resources for voting by mail, voting in person, and some NY resources for our NY based teams as well. If there are additional resources to add, please let us know – adafruit.com/vote

Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.

Join 24,000+ makers on Adafruit’s Discord channels and be part of the community! http://adafru.it/discord

Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.

Join us every Wednesday night at 8pm ET for Ask an Engineer!

Follow Adafruit on Instagram for top secret new products, behinds the scenes and more https://www.instagram.com/adafruit/

CircuitPython – The easiest way to program microcontrollers – CircuitPython.org