news.html

[% page.title="News" %]
[% page.sidebar = INCLUDE perl1/tpl/navigation.html %]

<P><U>Perl 1 Revitalized</U></P>
Jul 25, 2002</P>
<p>
The perl community is happy to announce the appointment of Michael
Schwern as the new head of maintenance for Perl 1, the original
version of perl. Michael comes to us with considerable experience both
in testing and QA, as well as managing scattered groups of
programmers. His skills should stand him in good stead heading the
maintenance of this long-neglected version of perl.</P>
<P>
First released in 1988, this version of the software has fallen into
an unfortunate slump with the release of versions 2, 3, 4, and 5 of
perl, derivative languages such as Python and Ruby. "We hope to
revitalize the perl 1 community, which has long been scoffed at by the
users of more recent, 'better' versions of perl."</P>
<p>
This version of perl has many advantages over its far more bloated
modern rivals. The source kit is barely 1% the size of the current
language distributions, and the resulting executable is also much
smaller, making it ideal for embedded use. The small source footprint
allows for easy auditing of the code. It's also remarkably fast,
so much so that you can often completely rebuild it from scratch and
run your program in the same time it takes newer, more "feature-full",
languages to just compile your program.</P>
<p>
News and additional information will be available on the official Perl
1 site, http://dev.perl.org/perl1/, including pointers to the
developer mailing list, perl1-porters.</P>