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

✵ 27. September 1954
Larry Wall photo
Larry Wall: 294   quotes 2   likes

Larry Wall Quotes

“Although the Perl Slogan is There's More Than One Way to Do It, I hesitate to make 10 ways to do something.”

Larry Wall

[9682@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV, 1990]
Usenet postings, 1990

Way

“Because. doesn't match \n. [ \0-\377] is the most efficient way to match everything currently. Maybe \e should match everything. And \E would of course match nothing.”

Larry Wall

[9847@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV, 1990]
Usenet postings, 1990

Way

“I view the JVM as just another architecture that Perl ought to be ported to.”

Larry Wall

That, and the Underwood typewriter...
[199808050415.VAA24026@wall.org, 1998]
Usenet postings, 1998

“I've always maintained a cordial dislike for indent, because it's usuallyright.”

Larry Wall

[199806221558.IAA07251@wall.org, 1998]
Usenet postings, 1998

“Odd that we think definitions are definitive.”

Larry Wall

[199702221943.LAA20388@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

Thinking

“I wasn't recommending that we make the links for them, only provide them with the tools to do so if they want to take the gamble”

Larry Wall

or the gambol
[199709292259.PAA10407@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

“This has been planned for some time. I guess we'll just have to find someone with an exceptionally round tuit.”

Larry Wall

[199709302338.QAA17037@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

Time

“tt>echo $package has manual pages available in source form.echo 'However, you don't have nroff, so they're probably useless to you.</tt”

Larry Wall

Source code, <code>Configure</code>

“Must be a different Larry Wall. There are at least 137 of us in the U. S.”

Larry Wall

[199809300035.RAA12495@wall.org, 1998]
Usenet postings, 1998

“OOPS! You naughty creature! You didn't run Configure with sh! I will attempt to remedy the situation by running sh for you…”

Larry Wall

Source code, <code>Configure</code>

“It may be possible to get this condition from within Perl if a signal handler runs at just the wrong moment. Another point for Chip…”

Larry Wall

[199710161546.IAA07885@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

“That which hits the fan tends to get flung in all directions.”

Larry Wall

[199809091801.LAA15194@wall.org, 1998]
Usenet postings, 1998

“Randal said it would be tough to do in sed. He didn't say he didn't understand sed. Randal understands sed quite well. Which is why he uses Perl.”

Larry Wall

[7874@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV, 1990]
Usenet postings, 1990

Understanding

“Anyway, there's plenty of room for doubt. It might seem easy enough, but computer language design is just like a stroll in the park.Jurassic Park, that is.”

Larry Wall

[1994Jun15.074039.2654@netlabs.com, 1994]
Usenet postings, 1994

“Why Bible quotes exclusively? What happened to the Eastern religions? I'm still working on the Unicode mods.”

Larry Wall

[199807021924.MAA05380@wall.org, 1998]
Usenet postings, 1998

Religion , Quotes

“print rand rand rand 1, '\n'; # interesting distribution”

Larry Wall

[199806191536.IAA19013@wall.org, 1998]
Usenet postings, 1998

“And don't tell me there isn't one bit of difference between null and space, because that's exactly how much difference there is.”

Larry Wall

[10209@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV, 1990]
Usenet postings, 1990

“tt>double value; /* or your money back! */short changed; /* so triple your money back! */</tt”

Larry Wall

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

Money , Change

“Symmetry is overrated. Overrated is symmetry.”

Larry Wall

[6vhq4r%24a6i@kiev.wall.org, 1998]
Usenet postings, 1998

“I don't think it's worth washing hogs over.”

Larry Wall

[199710060253.TAA09723@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

Thinking

“Are you perchance running on a 64-bit machine?”

Larry Wall

[199711102149.NAA16878@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

Way

“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. */</tt”

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

Housing

“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

Reality

“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

Way

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

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

Forgetting

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

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

Personality

“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

Way

“(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

Understanding

“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"

World , Beauty , Laughter

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

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

Way

“tt>s = (char*)(long)retval; /* ouch */</tt”

Larry Wall

doio.c.
Source code, Other files

“As someone pointed out, you could have an attribute that says 'optimize the heck out of this routine', and your definition of heck would be a parameter to the optimizer.”

Larry Wall

[199709081854.LAA20830@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

Optimism

“The autodecrement is not magical.”

Larry Wall

In the perl man page.
Documentation

“… an initial underscore already conveys strong feelings of magicalness to a C programmer.”

Larry Wall

[1992Nov9.195250.23584@netlabs.com, 1992]
Usenet postings, 1992

Feeling , Strong

“It's certainly easy to calculate the average attendance for Perl conferences.”

Larry Wall

[199710071721.KAA19014@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

“The court finds everyone to be in contempt (including himself :-), and orders everyone sentenced to five years hard labor.”

Larry Wall

Working on Perl, of course. [199807211548.IAA26184@wall.org, 1998]
Usenet postings, 1998

“As with all the other proposals, it's basically just a list of words. You can deal with that…”

Larry Wall

[199709032332.QAA21669@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

“I suppose one could claim that an undocumented feature has no semantics. :-(”

Larry Wall

[199710290036.QAA01818@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

“If you want your program to be readable, consider supplying the argument.”

Larry Wall

In the perl man page.
Documentation

“In general, they do what you want, unless you want consistency.”

Larry Wall

In the perl man page.
Documentation