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Larry Wall Quotes

Larry Arnold Wall is an American computer programmer and author. He created the Perl programming language. Wikipedia  

✵ 27. September 1954
Larry Wall photo

Works

Programming Perl
Programming Perl
Larry Wall
Larry Wall: 294   quotes 2   likes

Famous Larry Wall Quotes

“Real theology is always rather shocking to people who already think they know what they think. I'm still shocked myself.”

Larry Wall

[199708261932.MAA05218@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

“Beauty? What's that?”

Larry Wall

[199710221937.MAA25131@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

“One operator is no big deal. That can be fixed in a jiffy.”

Larry Wall

[199809151814.LAA22396@wall.org, 1998]
Usenet postings, 1998

“Lispers are among the best grads of the Sweep-It-Under-Someone-Else's-Carpet School of Simulated Simplicity. [ Was that sufficiently incendiary?]”

Larry Wall

[1992Jan10.201804.11926@netlabs.com, 1992]
Usenet postings, 1992

“Well, that's more-or-less what I was saying, though obviously addition is a little more cosmic than the bitwise operators.”

Larry Wall

[199709051808.LAA01780@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

“It would be possible to optimize some forms of goto, but I haven't bothered.”

Larry Wall

[199709041935.MAA27136@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

Larry Wall Quotes about thinking

“So I'm thinking about??, or!!, or //, or \\, or whatever. But I think I like?? the best so far. Or the least worst.”

Larry Wall

[199809150037.RAA17580@wall.org, 1998]
Usenet postings, 1998

“I think it's a new feature. Don't tell anyone it was an accident.”

Larry Wall

On s/foo/bar/eieio [10911@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV, 1991]
Usenet postings, 1991

“So please don't think I have a 'down' on the MVS people. I'm just pulling off their arms to beat other people over the head with.”

Larry Wall

[199808050415.VAA24026@wall.org, 1998]
Usenet postings, 1998

“My arthritic pinkies are already starting to ache just thinking about ||||=.”

Larry Wall

[199809251659.JAA06689@wall.org, 1998]
Usenet postings, 1998

“I think I'm happier with that. $rubyometer += 0.3 or so.”

Larry Wall

[20031219184224.GA19865@wall.org, 2003]
Usenet postings, 2003

“But I know what's important to me, and what isn't. And I think I know what people can get used to, and what they can even learn to like. (It just takes some people longer than others. :-)”

Larry Wall

Usenet postings, 1998

Larry Wall Quotes about people

“… Then you start building things like the Berlin wall to keep people inside your community. In anthropological terms, that's tribalism. A tribal Perl programmer might say, "If you leave the Perl tribe to go and join the Python tribe, we will hunt you down, cook you, and eat you." Or if you join the Ruby tribe, you will explode. By and large, I am not in favor of tribalism. Except for my tribe, of course.”

Larry Wall

ibid.
Other

“What is the sound of Perl? Is it not the sound of a wall that people have stopped banging their heads against?”

Larry Wall

[1992Aug26.184221.29627@netlabs.com, 1992]
Usenet postings, 1992

“There's some entertainment value in watching people juggle nitroglycerin.”

Larry Wall

[199712041747.JAA18908@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

“P. S. I suppose I really should be nicer to people today, considering I'll be singing in Billy Graham's choir tonight…”

Larry Wall

[199709261754.KAA23761@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

“(To someone at New York University) If you consistently take an antagonistic approach, however, people are going to start thinking you're from New York.”

Larry Wall

[10187@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV, 1990]
Usenet postings, 1990

“I'd make people say 'use Fork;' if I thought I could get away with it.”

Larry Wall

[199806232054.NAA01735@wall.org, 1998]
Usenet postings, 1998

Larry Wall: Trending quotes

“Of course, this being Perl, we could always take both approaches.”

Larry Wall

[199709021744.KAA12428@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

“Sorry. My testing organization is either too small, or too large, depending on how you look at it.”

Larry Wall

[1991Apr22.175438.8564@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov, 1991]
Usenet postings, 1991

Dependency

“Chip Salzenberg sent me a complete patch to add System V IPC (msg, sem and shm calls), so I added them. If that bothers you, you can always undefine them in config. sh.”

Larry Wall

[9384@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV, 1990]
Usenet postings, 1990

Larry Wall Quotes

“P. S. Perl's master plan (or what passes for one) is to take over the world like English did. Er, *as* English did…”

Larry Wall

[199705201832.LAA28393@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

World

“Call me bored, but don't call me boring.”

Larry Wall

[199705101952.MAA00756@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

“I dunno. Perhaps you should be happy that I have a policy of refraining from grumbling about handicapped operating systems.”

Larry Wall

[199808291719.KAA12244@wall.org, 1998]
Usenet postings, 1998

Happiness

“I'm reminded of the day my daughter came in, looked over my shoulder at some Perl 4 code, and said, 'What is that, swearing?”

Larry Wall

[199806181642.JAA10629@wall.org, 1998]
Usenet postings, 1998

Daughters

“tt>if (rsfp = mypopen('/bin/mail root','w')) { /* heh, heh */</tt”

Larry Wall

Source code, <code>perl.c</code>

“And other operators aren't so special syntactically, but weird in other ways, like 'scalar', and 'goto.”

Larry Wall

[199711071749.JAA29751@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

Way

“That is a known bug in 5.00550. Either an upgrade or a downgrade will fix it.”

Larry Wall

[6vu1vo%2489c@kiev.wall.org, 1998]
Usenet postings, 1998

“Tcl long ago fell into the Forth trap, and is now trying desperately to extricate itself (with some help from Sun's marketing department).”

Larry Wall

Usenet postings, 1997

Sun , Help

“If there's a particular problem that Perl is trying to solve, it's the basic fact that all programming languages suck. Sort of the concept of original sin, applied to programming languages.”

Larry Wall

Public Talks, The State of the Onion 10

Problem

“Life gets boring, someone invents another necessity, and once again we turn the crank on the screwjack of progress hoping that nobody gets screwed.”

Larry Wall

[199705101952.MAA00756@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

Life , Hope

“It's there as a sop to former Ada programmers.”

Larry Wall

Regarding 10_000_000 [11556@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV, 1991]
Usenet postings, 1991

“On the plus side, it's a lot easier in general to find /usr/include than cpp.”

Larry Wall

[199809041612.JAA05556@wall.org, 1998]
Usenet postings, 1998

“That should probably be written: no!@#$%^&*:@! semicolon”

Larry Wall

[199710161841.LAA13208@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

“Just don't create a file called -rf.”

Larry Wall

[11393@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV, 1991]
Usenet postings, 1991

“[ End of diatribe. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming…]”

Larry Wall

Source code, <code>Configure</code>

“And C was good at something I like to call manipulexity, that is the manipulation of complex things. While shell was good at something else which I call whipuptitude, the aptitude for whipping things up.”

Larry Wall

Public Talks, "Present Continuous - Future Perfect"

“It is my job in life to travel all roads, so that some may take the road less travelled, and others the road more travelled, and all have a pleasant day.”

Larry Wall

[199709241628.JAA08908@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

Life , Travel

“It's easy to solve the halting problem with a shotgun.”

Larry Wall

[199801151836.KAA14656@wall.org, 1998]
Usenet postings, 1998

Problem

“I think you didn't get a reply because you used the terms 'correct' and 'proper', neither of which has much meaning in Perl culture.”

Larry Wall

[199706251602.JAA01786@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

Thinking

“Besides, including < std_ice_cubes. h> is a fatal error on machines that don't have it yet. Bad language design, there…”

Larry Wall

[1991Aug22.220929.6857@netlabs.com, 1991]
Usenet postings, 1991

Error

“When's the last time you used duct tape on a duct?”

Larry Wall

"Perl, the First Postmodern Computer Language", perl.com, 1999-03-09 http://www.perl.com/pub/a/1999/03/pm.html#jump5
Other

Time

“It's not really a rule--it's more like a trend.”

Larry Wall

[199710221721.KAA24321@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

“True, it returns ' ' for false, but ' ' is an even more interesting number than 0.”

Larry Wall

[199707300650.XAA05515@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

Falseness

“To ordinary folks, conversion is not always automatic. It's something that may or may not require explicit assistance. See Billy Graham.”

Larry Wall

[199710141738.KAA22289@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

“[Boxed] Multiple bouncing balls in a box are a metaphor for community. Notice how the escaping balls explode. This is what happens to people who move from Perl to Ruby.”

Larry Wall

"The State of the Onion", perl.com, 2004-08-18 http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2004/08/18/onion.html?page=4
In reference to the boxed screensaver that comes with <code>xscreensaver</code>.
Other

People , Communication , Box

“Perl programming is an *empirical* science!”

Larry Wall

[10226@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV, 1990]
Usenet postings, 1990

Science

“Perhaps they will have to outlaw sending random lists of words. fee fie foe foo”

Larry Wall

[199710311916.LAA19760@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

“tt>/* now make a new head in the exact same spot */</tt”

Larry Wall

Source code, <code>cons.c</code>

“I started out as a BASIC programmer. Some people would say that I'm permanently damaged. Some people are undoubtedly right… But I'm not going to apologize for that. All language designers have their occasional idiosyncracies. I'm just better at it than most.”

Larry Wall

Public Talks, The State of the Onion 11

People

“Psychotics are consistently inconsistent. The essence of sanity is to be inconsistently inconsistent.”

Larry Wall

[199809041918.MAA06850@wall.org, 1998]
Usenet postings, 1998

“You have to admit that it's difficult to misplace the Perl sources.”

Larry Wall

[1992Aug26.184221.29627@netlabs.com, 1992]
Usenet postings, 1992

“That means I'll have to use $ans to suppress newlines now.Life is ridiculous.”

Larry Wall

Source code, <code>Configure</code>

“Er, Tom, I hate to be the one to point this out, but your fix list is starting to resemble a feature list. You must be human or something.”

Larry Wall

[199801081824.KAA29602@wall.org, 1998]
Usenet postings, 1998

Hate

“The only disadvantage I see is that it would force everyone to get Perl. Horrors.”

Larry Wall

[8854@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV, 1990]
Usenet postings, 1990

“If I don't document something, it's usually either for a good reason, or a bad reason. In this case it's a good reason.”

Larry Wall

[1992Jan17.005405.16806@netlabs.com, 1992]
Usenet postings, 1992

“Maybe we should take a clue from FTP and put in an option like 'print hash marks on every 1024 iterations.”

Larry Wall

[199807171819.LAA13771@wall.org, 1998]
Usenet postings, 1998

“Perl should remain fast and intuitive”

Larry Wall

to the extent that it is :-
[199804151704.KAA12290@wall.org, 1998]
Usenet postings, 1998

“As pointed out in a followup, Real Perl Programmers prefer things to be visually distinct.”

Larry Wall

[199710161841.LAA13208@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

“Remember though thatTHERE IS NO GENERAL RULE FOR CONVERTING A LIST INTO A SCALAR.”

Larry Wall

In the perl man page.
Documentation

“So… Perhaps the Perl 6 slogan should be "All Your Paradigms Are Belong To Us."”

Larry Wall

We'll get to that.
Public Talks, "Present Continuous - Future Perfect"

“I want to see people using Perl to glue things together creatively, not just technically but also socially.”

Larry Wall

[199702111730.JAA28598@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

People

“The following two statements are usually both true: There's not enough documentation. There's too much documentation.”

Larry Wall

[199709020026.RAA08431@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

“I'm sure a mathematician would claim that 0 and 1 are both very interesting numbers.”

Larry Wall

[199707300650.XAA05515@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

“Just don't make the '9' format pack/unpack numbers…”

Larry Wall

[199710091434.HAA00838@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

“Just put in another goto, and then it'll be readable.”

Larry Wall

[199804161810.LAA18902@wall.org, 1998]
Usenet postings, 1998

“That could certainly be done, but I don't want to fall into the Forth trap, where every running Forth implementation is really a different language.”

Larry Wall

[199705101952.MAA00756@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

“Real programmers can write assembly code in any language.”

Larry Wall

[8571@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV, 1990]
Usenet postings, 1990

“Your csh still thinks true is false. Write to your vendor today and tell them that next year Configure ought to 'rm /bin/csh' unless they fix their blasted shell.”

Larry Wall

Source code, <code>Configure</code>

Thinking , Falseness

“tt>str-> str_pok |= SP_FBM; /* deep magic */s = (unsigned char*)(str-> str_ptr); /* deeper magic */</tt”

Larry Wall

Source code, <code>util.c</code>

“tt>/* And you'll never guess what the dog had *//* in its mouth… */</tt”

Larry Wall

Source code, <code>stab.c</code>

Dogs

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