New Year, New Projects
Still, probably, too many of them
Welcome to 2026. What have you all been working on? Let me give you a bit of an overview of my month.
In-house training
I used to have a nice little sideline in in-house Perl training. But as fewer and fewer companies used Perl, it slowed down and, eventually, died off. For a few years, I assumed that part of my career was behind me.
But it’s had a late surge.
Just before Christmas, I got an email from an old friend from the London Perl Mongers, asking if I could give some Perl training to a few employees at his company. I, of course, agreed. I’ve done two days for them and I’m going back again next week.
All of which has made me think there might be other people out there who could also benefit from this training. In order to tempt those people into contacting me, I’ve put together a page where I’ve started to gather the slides from the large number of training courses I’ve run in the past. It’ll take a while (not least because my filing system has not been great in the past), but it’ll be worth a look, I hope.
If you think this could be useful to you, then please get in touch (just reply to this email).
Perl in TIOBE
Did you know that TIOBE stands for “The Importance of Being Earnest”? I’m not sure what the connection between Wilde’s play and a software popularity index is.
For about twenty years, there has been a lot of commentary in the Perl community over the TIOBE index. Many people have expended a lot of time and energy explaining why the TIOBE index doesn’t measure anything useful. This is because, over that time, has been showing a dramatic fall in interest in Perl.
Those complaints have stopped now.
That’s because, over the last year or so, Perl has been rising up the index again. Which is, to be honest, slightly surprising. But the rise is undeniable. In January 2025, Perl was at #25 in the index. In January 2026, it was at #11.
TIOBE only ever make the current month’s data available, which includes a comparison to the data from a year earlier. And because people often don’t realise that, we’ve had a year of “Perl leaps 20 places!” posts in r/perl. In order to attempt to counter that, I’ve put together a page that contains the data going back as far as I’ve managed to find it (which is, sadly, only to mid-2015). It would be great ot have the data going back further than that - but at least it gives some context to the currently monthly figures.
I still have no idea why Perl is suddenly doing so well, though. If you have any theories, I'd love to hear them.
Line of Succession work
I mentioned in the last newsletter that I’ve been doing some work on Line of Succession. This is all triggered by my desire to move it off my rented VPS and into the cloud. This means I want to make it as slim as possible, so cloud charges don’t cripple me.
One thing I did was to move the database from MariaDB to SQLite. The tables are all pretty small, and a permanent database server is one of the things that can really rack up the cloud costs. I should point out that this only works because the database here is totally read-only. The line of succession only changes three or four times a year and, when it does, I update a local copy of the database and upload that to the production server.
This was great, but I started to notice some outages on the app (thanks to PrettyGoodPing). It turned out that the system was running out of open filehandles. So the quick fix was to increase that to a huge number while I tracked down the real culprit. I soon worked out that I was assuming there was one persistent database connection per process - and that wasn’t the case. This was fine when I was using MariaDB, but for SQLite, each open connection is an open filehandle. Half an hour of investigation showed me where the problem was, and now the system runs forever without running out of filehandles.
Perl Ad Server
I run the Perl Ad Server - which is a simple way for people to add adverts for Perl community announcements to their websites. It’s been running for a while now and I had never really given much thought to the website that tells people what it is and how to use it.
Then Olaf Alders got in touch and asked if I would like to try out a new AI prompt/skill that he had developed (based on a blog post by Anil Dash). The idea is that you craft your text so that people are able to accurately (and accurately!) repeat your messaging, even when you aren’t around.
When looking at a project to try it out on, I thought of the Perl Ad Server. I fired up ChatGPT, gave it Olaf’s prompt and pointed it at the Ad Server’s web page. Within half an hour, I had the copy that you see on the page today. It’s a vast improvement on what was there before.
Dave Knows London
Later this year, it will be 46 years since I moved to London. I came here to go to university and just never left. In that time, I like to think I’ve walked most of the streets - certainly in Zone 1, maybe further out.
I’ve often thought that in an alternative universe, I could be a successful tour guide.
And now, I’ve dipped my toe into testing that theory. I’ve set up a website (using Substack) called Dave Knows London, where I plan to share my knowledge of London over the coming months. I’m also publishing PDFs of self-guided tours through interesting parts of London. The first one (a walk along the river from London Bridge to the Royal Festival Hall) is already available on Gumroad.
I wonder if anyone reading this newsletter was at the first YAPC Europe in London in 2000. As part of the evening entertainment, I took a group of people on a pub crawl along the Thames. That was basically this walk - but in reverse.
Domains & Substacks
I used to be a bit of a domain hoarder. You know, the kind of person who has a great idea for a side-project and buys the domain before writing any code. And then (in at least 50% of cases) never writes the code. Let me know if that sounds at all familiar.
I’ve got better recently, though. Since 2020, I’ve made a determined effort to let a load of domains lapse. I still have too many, but it’s a manageable number. That’s why I wrote the domain management tool that I mentioned in the last newsletter[*].
But I may have replaced that with a new vice - collecting Substacks. And I don’t mean Substack subscriptions (surely, we all do that - let me know if you have one and I’ll subscribe). No, I mean actual Substacks that I own.
In case you want to subscribe to the full set:
One Thing at a Time - this one. You’re probably already subscribed
Line of Succession - posts about the British royal family (and I’m still slightly puzzled how I became an expert on that)
The Horsell Transmissions - my emerging novel, telling the story of The War of the Worlds from the perspective of the Martians
Dave Knows London - as mentioned above. Still getting going
[*] And note that’s living on a subdirectory of an existing domain. In the past, that would have been on its own domain - that’s a sign of me getting better.
An intriguing series of posts
I like to mention at least one project that isn’t mine. And, today, it’s an intriguing series of blog posts from my old friend James Duncan. The point is to introduce his new project Pagelove. He has certainly piqued my curiosity.
The adverts
I’ve talked about my rejuvenated enthusiasm for in-house training. But that’s not the only way I could, perhaps, help you. Take a look at my services page and let me know if there’s anything there that interests you.
That’s all for this time. See you in a month (or so!)
Dave…