I have been thinking about 2010 and the different things that happened in the Perl community.  I’m not a good writer, nor do I have a lot of time to write, so I’m going to create a list:  a list of the things in the Perl world that I thought were great in 2010.  The following are in the order that they came out of my brain:

1. The release of Perl 5.12

Jesse Vincent and the release managers gave us not only a new stable version of Perl but also a new time-based release cycle for future versions of Perl, so we will have Perl 5.14 to look forward to this year.

2. The release of Rakudo Star

Giving me hope for the future of Perl 6.

3. Dave Mitchell’s Perl 5 Bug Fixing Grant

Dave has been doing amazing work with this grant having spent just over 500 hours in 2010 to close 127 bugs.  I’m delighted that this grant has been extended and that Dave can continue this work into 2011.

4. GSoC and Google Code-In

Jonathan Leto and his team did a great job of getting The Perl Foundation and The Parrot Foundation involved in Google Summer of Code and the new Google Code-In.

5. Matt Trout’s State of the Velicoraptor Talk at YAPC

I really liked hearing Matt give this uplifting talk at YAPC::EU and YAPC::NA.  I enjoyed hearing about all the positive things that were happening in the Perl world and think that all our conferences need a positive keynote like this one.

6. CPAN Testers

I read just the other day that CPAN Testers has just passed 10 million test reports!

7. Events Group

A group of volunteers decided to set-up Perl booths at a number of non-Perl conferences including FOSDEM and CeBIT.

8. Modernisation of Perl Web Sites

This year many of the major Perl sites had a face lift, including perl.com, perl.org, and news.perlfoundation.org.

9. Send-A-Newbie program

The Enlightened Perl Organisation took over the send-a-newbie program that provides financial support to first time attendees of YAPC::EU.

10. Miyagawa

I know, it might seem like a strange thing to write, but when I think of Perl I think of people.  And I’m always astounded by the amount of work that Miyagawa does and I’m certainly looking forward to what will come out of his brain in 2011.

2010 was a great year for Perl, let’s hope that 2011 is just as excellent!