6 months of blogging the onion
Tags: perl, blogging, devto, discuss
Published: 2021-04-16 12:46:34

It has been around 6 months since I started to blog **a lot**.

I followed the calls from [Gabor Szabo](http://blogs.perl.org/users/gabor_szabo/2020/11/perl-on-devto.html), [Joel Berger](http://blogs.perl.org/users/joel_berger/2020/09/crosspost-nginxcertbot-recipe.html) and [Dave Cross](https://perlhacks.com/2020/09/blogging-for-perl/) then on top I added [mine](https://dev.to/thibaultduponchelle/a-call-to-perl-bloggers-to-come-on-dev-to-27ee)

My intention was clearly to setup a "Perl blogging scene" on devto and I feel like it works, see [#Perl](https://dev.to/t/perl) and numbers from [perlweekly](https://perlweekly.com/stats.html):
![Blogs](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/3qxe3goonfapyvd1folp.png)

The number of blog posts does not decreased on BPO (it was not the goal, I want *more* posts, not less!) but the number of posts on [DevTo](https://dev.to/) increased lot yeah ! :dancer:
It reached a minimum steady number that make it a viable place to monitor for posts :) (and to make people join and contribute)

It's a teamwork and I do not deserve much credits, but I did a pretty decent effort (more than 50 blog posts in 6 months):
![A lot of posts](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/t4bwduxct8dxq1u2simz.png)

Will I blog as much for the coming 6 months? Probably not, but I have to say that blogging is very rewarding since I have the feeling to show Perl in a nice way and I have a lot of interactions with great people (comments :heart:). 

It also helps me practice the "art of writing", help me to dig deeper in some areas and suddenly there are so much great blog posts from Perl figures all around!
@mjgardner @leontimmermans @kraih @davorg @ovid @haarg  @tobyink
(I wanted to put more names but there is a limit on how many people I can mention)

These people are often more successful than me (I have to admit that they produce better blog posts :smiley:), **Ovid** had an immediate huge success with Perl-but-generalist posts, that's crazy!  

# Hits
Back to me, my biggest hit is not Perl related but about [how a user triggered a crypto miner in my github action through a malicious pull request](https://dev.to/thibaultduponchelle/the-github-action-mining-attack-through-pull-request-2lmc), if you're interested in github actions and security, check it out.

My other hits (could we really talk about *hits*? :grinning:) are around the topic of Perl and blogging: [A call to Perl bloggers to come on DevTo](https://dev.to/thibaultduponchelle/a-call-to-perl-bloggers-to-come-on-dev-to-27ee) or [To help Perl, just blog](https://dev.to/thibaultduponchelle/to-help-perl-just-blog-9h4)

Or around Perl reputation like [A Perl love letter](https://dev.to/thibaultduponchelle/a-perl-love-letter-20jj) or [The hate of Perl in memes](https://dev.to/thibaultduponchelle/the-hate-of-perl-in-memes-469e)

I also made books reviews that I wrote also as a kind of "personal notes". The list of reviews is [here](https://dev.to/thibaultduponchelle/about-perl-books-review-1cj6)

[Mojolicious related](https://dev.to/t/mojolicious) posts are always well received! Like for instance this [Simple live chart using mojolicious](https://dev.to/thibaultduponchelle/simple-live-chart-using-mojolicious-1iej)

In between I wrote a lot of posts about toolchain/(Meta)CPAN:
- [A tour of perl github actions](https://dev.to/thibaultduponchelle/a-tour-of-perl-github-actions-44lp)
- [Browse CPAN modules per namespace](https://dev.to/thibaultduponchelle/browse-cpan-modules-per-namespaces-6p)
- [My GitHub action to upload to CPAN](https://dev.to/thibaultduponchelle/new-upload-to-cpan-github-action-4h8j)
- [CPAN utils](https://dev.to/thibaultduponchelle/cpan-utils-4g4p)
- [#AdoptAPerlModule](https://dev.to/thibaultduponchelle/adoptaperlmodule-2oh2)
- [SVG CPAN logo](https://dev.to/thibaultduponchelle/svg-cpan-logo-gel)
- [Install CPAN modules from different sources](https://dev.to/thibaultduponchelle/install-cpan-modules-from-different-sources-with-cpanminus-5afi)

And do you read my [first post](https://dev.to/thibaultduponchelle/my-tprcic-2020-review-1187)?

## Failures
To be honest there are also some failures that I consider even more interesting to link :smiley:

My parallel between [Perl devs and Mandalorians](https://dev.to/thibaultduponchelle/perl-programmers-are-mandalorians-l0b) was cool but a bit weird for readers :smiley: (but I get some very kind likes)

I am proud of my serie about JAPHs (what a "risky" topic) but the 2 first episodes [JAPHs autopsies 1](https://dev.to/thibaultduponchelle/japhs-autopsies-1-4939) and [JAPHs autopsies 2](https://dev.to/thibaultduponchelle/japhs-autopsies-2-41jl) were almost totally ignored.

My posts in French never worked but I continued to post them anyway :grinning: like [Book review "Perl pour l'impatient"](https://dev.to/thibaultduponchelle/book-review-perl-pour-l-impatient-4dfi) or this terrible absolutely-no-like [Critique de livre : Gimp 2.10 - Special debutants](https://dev.to/thibaultduponchelle/critique-de-livre-gimp-2-10-special-debutants-4gio)

Aside from Perl, I published some posts about docker ([1](https://dev.to/thibaultduponchelle/do-you-really-need-to-merge-docker-layers-1j1), [2](https://dev.to/thibaultduponchelle/remotely-connect-to-a-running-docker-12id)) or security ([Billions laughs attack](https://dev.to/thibaultduponchelle/billion-laughs-attack-examples-59i))

(I'm kidding with "failures" but it is not, I'm not writing for likes)

## Conclusion
As I said [in my call](https://dev.to/thibaultduponchelle/a-call-to-perl-bloggers-to-come-on-dev-to-27ee), I'm more a blog reader than a writer, so I'm very eager to read *your* posts!

So please dear reader, unleash the writer living in you! :smiley: