The State of the Onion 10
by Larry Wall |

I've talked before about how the stages in Perl's life are very much like that of a kid. To review:

This extended metaphor can be extended even further as necessary and prudent. Actually, it's probably unnecessary and imprudent, but I'll extend it anyway, because I find the metaphor useful. Perl, my fifth child, is showing various signs that she is about to grow up, and as a pseudo-parent, that makes me pseudo-proud of her. But there are other ways the metaphor makes me happy. For instance, it gives me another argument about the name of Perl 6.

From time to time, people have suggested that Perl 6 is sufficiently different from Perl 5 that she should be given a new name. But we don't usually rename our kids when they grow up. They may choose to rename themselves, of course. For the moment I think Perl would like her name to stay Perl.

Now, I know what some of you are thinking: in anthropomorphizing Perl this way, Larry has gone completely off the deep end. That's not possible--I started out by jumping off the deep end, and I haven't noticed the water getting any shallower lately.

But in justification of my metaphor, let me just say that when I say "Perl" here, I'm not just talking about the language, but the entire culture. There are a lot of people who worked hard to raise Perl up to where she is today, and a bunch more people working hard to send her off to college. It's the collective aspirations of those people that is the real personality of Perl.

When we first announced the Perl 6 effort back in 2000, we said it would be the community redesign of Perl. That continues to be the case today. It may look like I'm making all these arbitrary decisions as the language designer, but as with a teenager, you somehow end up making most of your decisions consistent with what they want. With what the Perl community wants, in this case.

If a teenager doesn't want to listen to you, you can't make 'em.

The fact is, Perl would be nothing without the people around her. Here's a new acronym:

or if you like:

It really helps to have an extended family to raise a kid well. American culture has been somewhat reductionist in this respect, but a lot of other cultures around the world understand the importance of extended family. Maybe it's just because Americans move around so much. But it's a healthy trend that young people these days are manufacturing their own extended families. At the church I go to, we call it "Doing Life Together." Here in the extended Perl family, we're doing life together too.

We have people in our family like Uncle Chip and Aunt Audrey. There's Cousin Allison, and Cousin Ingy, and Cousin Uri, and our very own Evil Brother Damian. I think Randal occasionally enjoys being the honorary black sheep of the family, as it were.

It all kind of reminds me of the Addams family. Hmm.

I watched The Addams Family a lot when I was young. Maybe you should call me Gomez, and call Gloria, Morticia. I must confess that I do love it when my wife speaks French. It gives me déjà vu all up and down my spine.

It's okay for me to tell you that because I live in a fishbowl.

I'm not sure who gets to be Lurch. Or Thing. Anybody wanna volunteer? We're always looking for volunteers in the Perl community. Don't be scared. The Addams family can be a little scary, and so can the Perl family, but you'll notice we're also affectionate and accepting. In a ghoulish sort of way.

We could take this TV family metaphor a lot further, but fortunately for you I never watched the Partridge Family or The Brady Bunch or All in the Family or Father Knows Best. Those of you who were here before know I mostly watched The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

I also watched Combat, a World War II show. But I was kind of a gruesome little kid that way.

I like gruesome shows. Maybe that explains why I liked the Addams family. Hmm. I once sat on the lap of the Santa Claus at Sears and asked for all five toy machine guns listed in the Sears catalog that year. For some reason I didn't get any of them. But I suppose my family loved me in spite of my faults. My role models in parenting obviously didn't come from TV. Or maybe they did. You know, that would explain a lot about how my family turned out. In actual fact, the picture above is another self-portrait done by my daughter Geneva.

Anyway, I love my own family, even if they're kind of peculiar at times. Last month we were staying at a Motel 6 in Medford, Oregon. Gloria kindly went off to fetch me a cup of coffee from the motel lobby, and then she came to this door and stood there for a while wondering how to pull the door open with her hands full. Then she realized that the door must have been designed by someone who thinks there should be only one obvious way to do it. Because, the fact is, you can either pull or push this door, despite what it says. I suggested we should start marking such pushmepullyu doors with a P*. We obviously need more globs in real life.

Anyway, back to my weird family--this summer as we were driving around, we had a great literary discussion about how Tolstoy debunks the Great Man theory of history in War and Peace. After discussing the far-too-heavily overloaded namespace in Russian novels and the almost complete absence of names in the Tale of Genji, we tried to decide if the Tale of Genji was the first novel or not, and decided that it was really the first soap opera. Of course, then there had to be a long discussion of what really was the first novel--Tale of Genji, Madame Bovary, or Sense and Sensibility. Then there's the first romance, first mystery, first fantasy, first science fiction, first modern novel, etc. One interesting fact we noted was that the first in a genre almost always has to officially be some other genre too. For example, the Tale of Genji was written in the existing form of explication of some haiku. Transitional forms are important in biological evolution as well, as one species learns to become another species. That's why we explicitly allow people to program babytalk in Perl. The only way to become smart is to be stupid first. Puts a new spin on the Great Man theory of history.

So then, as we were driving we saw a cloud formation resembling Thomas Jefferson, which led us to speculate on the Great Documents theory of history. "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" brought up the Great Slogans theory of history.

Back to Tolstoy: "Moscow didn't burn because Napoleon decided to burn it. Moscow burned because it was made of wood." Those of you who attended YAPC Chicago may recognize that as the Great Cow theory of history. Or maybe the lantern was really kicked over by a camel, and there was a coverup.

Anyway, back to the family again, presuming the house hasn't burned down. They say that "A family is where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in." Arguably, regardless of your viewpoint, many people have been, um, taken in by Perl culture.

Sorry. I have a low taste for taking people in with puns.

But hey, taking people in is good. And stray kitties.

Some families just naturally accumulate strays. My wife and I were both fortunate enough to grow up in families that took in strays as a matter of course. We have a number of honorary members of our own family. I think a good family tends to Borg people who need to be taken in. It's a lot like the way Audrey hands out commit bits to Pugs left and right. It all one big happy hivemind. Er, I mean family.

Now, it's all well and good to get people in the door, but that's only the beginning of accessibility. Whenever you get someone new in the family, either by birth or by adoption, where do you go from there? You have to raise your kids somehow, and they're all different. Raising different kids requires different approaches, just like computer problems do.

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