Larry Wall: Trending quotes

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Larry Wall: 588 quotes2 likes

“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

“The random quantum fluctuations of my brain are historical accidents that happen to have decided that the concepts of dynamic scoping and lexical scoping are orthogonal and should remain that way.”

Larry Wall

[199709021854.LAA12794@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

“The computer should be doing the hard work. That's what it's paid to do, after all.”

Larry Wall

[199709012312.QAA08121@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

“tt>/* This bit of chicanery makes a unary function followed by a parenthesis into a function with one argument, highest precedence. */

Larry Wall

toke.c
Source code, Other files

“Even the White House has a press agent.”

Larry Wall

[199804150048.RAA08083@wall.org, 1998]
Usenet postings, 1998

“And we can always supply them with a program that makes identical files into links to a single file.”

Larry Wall

[199709292012.NAA09616@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

“Let's say the docs present a simplified view of reality…”

Larry Wall

[6940@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV, 1990]
Usenet postings, 1990

“Perl is designed to give you several ways to do anything, so consider picking the most readable one.”

Larry Wall

In the perl man page.
Documentation

“tt>#define NULL 0 /* silly thing is, we don't even use this */

Larry Wall

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

“Boss: You forgot to assign the result of your map!Hacker: Dang, I'm always forgetting my assignations…Boss: And what's that 'goto' doing there?!?Hacker: Er, I guess my finger slipped when I was typing 'getservbyport'…Boss: Ah well, accidents will happen. Maybe we should have picked APL.”

Larry Wall

[199710311732.JAA19169@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

“tt>echo 'Congratulations. You aren't running Eunice.

Larry Wall

Source code, <code>Configure</code>

“Even if you aren't in doubt, consider the mental welfare of the person who has to maintain the code after you, and who will probably put parens in the wrong place.”

Larry Wall

In the perl man page.
Documentation

“There's really no way to fix this and still keep Perl pathologically eclectic.”

Larry Wall book Programming Perl

Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Jon Orwant, Programming Perl, third edition, section 3.10.
Other

“(To the extent that anyone but a Prolog programmer can understand \X totally. (And to the extent that a Prolog programmer can understand 'cut'.)”

Larry Wall

Usenet postings, 1997

“I simultaneously believe that languages are wonderful and awful. You have to hold both of those. Ugly things can be beautiful. And beautiful can get ugly very fast. You know, take Lisp. You know, it's the most beautiful language in the world. At least up until Haskell came along. (laughter) But, you know, every program in Lisp is just ugly. I don't figure how that works.”

Larry Wall

Public Talks, "Present Continuous - Future Perfect"

“tt>echo 'Hmmm…you don't have Berkeley networking in libc. a…'echo 'but the Wollongong group seems to have hacked it in.

Larry Wall

Source code, <code>Configure</code>

“I'm afraid my gut level reaction is basically, proceed is cute, but cute doesn't cut it in the emergency room.”

Larry Wall

[199710281816.KAA29614@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

“Perhaps I'm missing the gene for making enemies.”

Larry Wall

[199708040319.UAA16213@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

“(Never thought I'd be telling Malcolm and Ilya the same thing…”

Larry Wall

[199711071819.KAA29909@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

“There are probably better ways to do that, but it would make the parser more complex. I do, occasionally, struggle feebly against complexity…”

Larry Wall

[7886@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV, 1990]
Usenet postings, 1990