Perl: The First Twenty-Five Years
Before the advent of Perl 5 the resources for collecting these scripts were few and far between, and one or two have fallen into legend and are now taken out by wizened Perlers around a flickering light where the Tales of Terror are shared and Matt's Script Archive comes into its own magnificent glory. In these Enlightened days it is easy to mock those early pioneers and to smile fondly at some of the erroneous efforts, but they were the only resource of their time and they were formative in the evolution."