British Perl guru Matt Trout dead at 42

obituary Matt Trout will be missed by many, even though he was a divisive figure who featured several times on The Register.

Matthew S Trout was a British Perl developer, consultant, and author. He was one of the primary authors of the Catalyst web framework, about which he literally wrote the book.

He was also the cofounder of Shadowcat Systems with Matt Keating, who posted a touching obituary on the company's blog, appropriately titled with a phrase from Terry Pratchett: Ripples They Cause in the World.

Trout was a child prodigy and also found his way into the Perl community young – in his own words, "thrust into Perl at the tender age of seventeen by a backup accident". His verdict on the language, from his homepage, spoke to us:

Perl is a wonderful language once you get over the fact that a slightly quirky set of syntax and embedded ...