My Guilty Perl Obsession

Aug 26, 2025 by Bryan S. Katz

The Guilt

I consider myself successful.
I’m 45, with a sportscar, a house, a family, and a small business now 30 years old.
I made good decisions.
My car is 15-years old, my monitors are 20-years old, my chair is 25-years old, my desk is 25-years old.
My computers historically last 10-years; I just tossed a mouse that survived 8-years.
Perl.
My first venture into server-side web development was Lotus Notes…that lasted 5 days.
Perl has lasted me nearly 30 years, and we sure as hell ain’t done yet!

I didn’t meet the perl community until the Toronto conference in 2023.
That’s where I saw the faces.
That’s when I saw the humanity.
That’s why I felt the guilt.

I’d paid for my car, for my house, for my computers, my desk, and my chair.
Perl came for free.
I didn’t pay for it; I didn’t work for it.
But at the conference, before me stood the people who did.

I’ve worked hard for my success.
It’s clear to me now that I wasn’t the only one working hard for my success.
How much of your success is because of all of their hard work?
And how much have you contributed in return?
Me? I contributed absolutely nothing.

That’s my guilt.
But this is the very best kind of guilt.
Because it’s not too late!
In fact, now is the perfect time.

I’ve hired members of the perl community.
That’s a start.
I’m donating directly to the foundation.
And I intend to continue doing so.
If my success depends on perl, then perl depends on my success.

The Pleasure

Perl was always a perfect fit for me.
As a syntax, it was concise, yet flexible.
My code’s form could mirror its function.
How perfectly splendid.

Perl is the basis of Holophrastic’s web development platform: Pipelines.
As new popular languages have come along, they’re touted as the best new amazing modern.
And then they vanish, supplanted by the very next amazing.
Had I invested in each, I’d have more archives of code than formats of music albums.

Instead, I rest easy in the knowledge that perl will always keep up.
xls, xlsx, pdf, mysql, mariadb, imagemagick, json, curl
There will always be a cpan module waiting for me when I need it.
My clients have no idea the power that I wield with my fingertips.
AI translations, image processing craziness, survey systems built for 100'000 concurrent test-takers…
And while all of that definitely took some expertise on my end,
Perl created exactly zero hurdles,
It never got in the way at all.

Longevity.
Perl’s got it.
The Perl Foundation’s got it.
The Perl Community’s got it.
I’ve got it.
The lines between? All blurry.

Holophrastic Enterprises Inc.

Custom Business Web Development

I work as what I’d call an inside-contractor.
I’m a speed-dial (is that still a thing?) phone call away.
Occasionally, a client will call me a dozen times in a day.
I’m closer than their coleague in the next office.

It usually starts with “a website”
the typical sales- or marketing-oriented something-pretty

Then business takes over.
A product-configuration wizard
A sales-commission calculator
Can you connect to our accounting software and provide the reports that it can’t?
Can you replace our warehouse-production backend?
What about a portal?

Yes; yes I can.
One business obstacle at a time.

Now, 30 years later, I often encounter code & comments, decades old.
The feeling I get from seeing a line that’s now older than the me who wrote it…
I used to feel alone.
I now feel that thanks to the perl community, I was never alone.

Holophrastic is proud to be the first sponsor of the 2026 Perl and Raku Conference.