Hello, world

OK, time to go blogging.

For a couple of months, it had been one of these things I knew I wanted to do sooner or later ... but preferred to leave until later. Somehow there was always something more urgent, a bug to fix, a release to prepare, a doc to write, an analysis to rediscuss, a new musical piece to rehearse, so I never got into really doing it.

Matt Trout already tickled me a couple of weeks ago in his commentary about DBIx::DataModel, but his vehement exhortations at YAPC::EU::2009 finally convinced me that there is no excuse to delay it any further : I have to join that Ironman competition, a grand idea for getting people to write and propagate thoughts and facts about Perl development.

Perl blogging had been around for a while, in particular in use.perl journals, but the Ironman competion really gave a new thrust to it; and the information that circulates through that new means is really valuable, because people share thoughts, considerations, design issues as soon as they emerge, even partially shaped, and that's good enough to get readers to also start thinking about those issues. Blogging is less intrusive than mailing lists: you don't throw something out saying "hey, folks, this is for you", you rather leave some dangling thought somewhere, and whoever comes across it can grab it if interested; so even if your idea is vague or controversial, it doesn't matter.

Once the decision to blog was taken, I had to decide about the how and where. I already had a L, no very much used so far, but good enough. Many people complain about the use.perl site, and true enough, it has a number of inconveniences, and didn't evolve since it was launched a couple of years ago; but it has the merit to exist and still is a valuable resource for the Perl community.
However, I felt that blogging in use.perl would somehow miss the point of Ironman, which is to get the world to hear about perl outside of the Perl echo chamber.

The other solution would be to go like real geeks, who have their own internet domains, running software they have chosen or written themselves, caring about configuration and maintenance issues ... however I haven't found the time to do it for the last 6 months. So finally there I am, hosted by blogger.com, and I know that everything written here will definitely be indexed, so the goal of propagating Perl culture should be attained...

Hello, world, please come back and stay in tune !