Larry Wall
Larry Wall
Larry Wall is a computer programmer and author, most widely known as the creator of the Perl programming language...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth10 March 1949
CountryCanada
way next language
Natural languages generally are not designed by humans, they're just designed by the participants and you say something new and somebody else says, "Oh, that's a cool way to say it," and the next thing you know, everyone is saying it because it's shiny.
inspiring laziness virtue
Laziness is a programmers main virtue.
jobs fire boss
A Perl program is correct if it gets the job done before your boss fires you.
self hands smell
The camel has evolved to be relatively self-sufficient. On the other hand, the camel has not evolved to smell good. Neither has Perl.
language computer ambiguous
Human languages tend to be much more ambiguous than computer languages because humans are much smarter about interpreting the context.
compromise agree
We all agree on the necessity of compromise. We just can't agree on when it's necessary to compromise.
wall people sound
What is the sound of Perl? Is it not the sound of a wall that people have stopped banging their heads against?
thinking
You can't have filenames longer than 14 chars. You can't even think about them!
baby writing ideas
You don't have to know the whole language to use it usefully, you can do baby talk, you can do grown up talk, you can cuss in it, you can write poetry, you can be a playwright, is sort of the idea.
hate writing love-hate
For me, writing is a love-hate relationship.
easy should hard
Easy things should be easy, and hard things should be possible.
want information
Information wants to be useful.
ideas special littles
There's many scripting languages in the world, Perl is a little bit special because it is based more on some ideas from the way natural languages work.
territory arrogant language
All language designers are arrogant. Goes with the territory...