A very happy birthday indeed to this wonderful toolkit for quick and dirty programming. From Wired:
Dec. 18, 1987: Perl Simplifies the Labyrinth That Is Programming Language
1987: The first version of the Perl programming language is released.
Perl was the brainchild of Larry Wall, a programmer at Unisys, who borrowed from existing languages, especially C, to create a general-purpose language intended originally to simplify text manipulation. Through constant upgrading Perl is now used for practically everything else as well, including all aspects of web development, system administration and networking.
Perl went through a rapid series of upgrades -- less than seven years elapsed between versions 1.0 and 5.0 -- before the language was fully mature. Even at that, Perl 5 has been continuously tinkered with since 1994, with many additional features keeping Perl at the forefront of programming languages.
Wall designed Perl to reflect the realities of modern computer programming. As the cost of hardware was dropping and computers became a central feature of everyday life, the cost of programmers soared. Perl's relative simplicity and flexibility helps wring the maximum amount of efficiency out of these highly skilled -- and highly paid -- individuals.
Although the name Perl is sometimes said to stand for "Practical Extraction and Report Language," its actual origin is not so colorless: Wall originally intended to call his language Pearl, a reference to the Parable of the Pearl from the Gospel of Matthew. But a programming language called Pearl already existed, so Wall dropped the a to avoid confusion.
The Wired article is based on this Wikipedia entry. My personal programming language is solder and copper wire -- I am not a software person but I have to say, Perl is really useful when I need something quick and dirty. A very good and well thought out language...
