Buddy Burden

So I thought I’d kick off my inaugural Perl blog post by answering the question I’m sure you’re asking right about now: who am I, and why should you care?

Of course, the short answer is: “you shouldn’t.” I have another blog whose title sums up how I feel about blogs.  The short version is, they’re crystallizations of other people’s opinions, and, as we used to say in grade school, opinions are like assholes: everybody’s got one, they’re all different, and they all stink.

But notice how that didn’t keep me from starting a blog myself.  Also note that there are 83 posts on said blog.  So obviously I’m a big ol’ hypocrite.

Anyways, to the extent that you should care who I am (which is, as I say, not very much), I suppose the primary things you want to know about me are my CPAN credentials.  (Although my other blog is primarily non-technical, I do occasionally talk about tech stuff, and, as I said in one such post, “And your fellow members of the Perl tribe, they shall know you by your CPAN modules.”) Honestly, there isn’t very much, and what little there is ain’t all that impressive.  But let me run down the list.

I have thus far only uploaded one original module, which is called Debuggit.  I mainly uploaded it because I got tired of constantly rewriting it at every new job I took.  It’s very simple, but there’s lots of documentation for it, so it seems far more complex than it is.  So that’s nice.

I’ve also taken over one CPAN module, Data::Random.  How that came to be is a moderately interesting story that perhaps will turn into my first real blog post here (as this one hardly counts).

I’m also a co-maintainer on one CPAN module, Method::Signatures.  That module is one of the many Schwern modules (there should be a name for that: schwerndules, or something), which I happened to decide one day was going to be what I based a fix for the heinous problems of MooseX::Declare on.  This led me to asking Schwern if I could add types to MS, which he thoughtfully let me do, then asking if I could bundle a replacement for MooseX::Method::Signatures into MS, which he thoughtfully let me do, then he thoughtfully gave me co-maint status (probably so he didn’t have to listen to me whine any more when he didn’t have time to do a release), and so that’s that.  If there really was a reason to care who I am (and I’m not saying there is, mind you), this would have to be it.  MooseX::Declare is a great module that’s unfortunately been crippled by the problems of MXMS, and I really believe Method::Signatures::Modifiers can rescue it.  I even gave a talk on it to my local Perl Mongers.  (I signed up to do a lightning talk on it last YAPC, but my talk didn’t get accepted.  Ah well.) Perhaps I can make a blog post out of that one as well.

I’ve also submitted a few patches here and there.  The biggest one would be the all_done() function of Test::Most, which was around before Schwern added done_testing() to Test::More—in fact, I presume (although I never asked) that done_testing was inspired (at least partially) by all_done.

That’s pretty much all I got on CPAN.  I do very occasionally show up on Perl Monks, under a completely different name (long story), but, as you can see, I have very few write-ups, despite having been around a long time.  I’m mostly a lurker, and, honestly, not even much of that these days.  So little time.

Let’s see ... who do I know that you might know?  Well, I work with this guy, and this guy is my boss, and this guy is my boss’s boss.  I used to work with this guy, and also this guy (yes, I labor under the delusion that I can use “guy” in a gender-neutral fashion), and also this guy, and also this guy.  I interviewed this guy once, and I hired this guy as a contractor once, and I worked with this guy a few times on database stuff, mostly long-distance.  Oh, and I’ve attended enough Perl Mongers meetings with this guy that he probably knows my face, although I couldn’t tell you if he knows my name.

I first learned Perl in 1996.  It was Perl 4 (although Perl 5 was out then, it was still awfully new), and I thought it was vaguely interesting.  Then I picked up Perl 5, and it got better.  Then I started doing little side projects in Perl for my customer (which was primarily a C shop), then I started introducing Perl into my own company’s projects (I was running my own small development shop), and I programmed in both C++ and Perl (often at the same time) for a while, and eventually I moved to all Perl.  After I gave up my company, I worked here doing pure Perl web development, and then I moved here doing the same thing.  I’ve been a Perl grunt, a Perl boss, a Perl mentor, a Perl manager, and a Perl architect.  (I thought about being a Perl instructor for a while, but I never got around to fleshing out the syllabus.)

In short, I’m not that much different from you: I’ve done a few things, and I’ve been around a while, but I’m hardly a Perl super-star.  I’m just a fellow coder, and there’s no particular reason to put much stock in anything I have to say.  But, for all that, I thought that I might occasionally share my experiences, mainly because I am just another Perl hacker.  Maybe an everyman perspective can be useful, or enlightening, or at least vaguely entertaining.

Or, if not, this is just one more Perl blog for you to ignore. :-)