My blog and I are joining the Iron Man competition!

It’s probably not the kind of Iron Man competition that you’re used to hearing about. This one is a challenge to blog at least once per week, every week, about Perl and Perl-related technologies.

My buddy Matt Trout, co-founder of Shadowcat Systems, creator of DBIx::Class, a core contributor to Catalyst, as well as all sorts of other great Perl goodies, is starting a blogging contest to try to get the word out that Perl is still alive and well, and perhaps try and overthrow the public perception that Perl is use old-school “use CGI;”. And he’s also a hilarious public speaker too.

I’m going to be taking part from this blog. I love Perl, and have been writing software in it for nearly 15 years. The problem with a lot of people like myself is that we already know that Perl is great, and is used throughout the world to solve mission-critical problems on a daily basis. But we tend to forget that unlike Java, .Net, and other crappy newcomers, Perl doesn’t have a marketing department trying to convince people that their language doesn’t suck. Anyone who’s had to deal with Java CLASSPATH problems, .Net’s problems like – well, that it’s .Net, for starters – knows that just because there’s industry buzz about something doesn’t mean it’s lacking in the “SUCK” department.

Please check out http://www.enlightenedperl.org/ironman.html and join in. Or alternately you can email ironman@shadowcat.co.uk if you want to contribute. At the very least, I suggest you follow the Enlightened Perl Iron Man blog. If you’re following this one, at the very least you’ll be following a small part of it.