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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

“I surely do hope that's a syntax error.”

Larry Wall

[199710011752.KAA21624@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

Hope , Error

“Well, enough clowning around. Perl is, in intent, a cleaned up and summarized version of that wonderful semi-natural language known as'Unix.”

Larry Wall

[1994Apr6.184419.3687@netlabs.com, 1994]
Usenet postings, 1994

Nature

“And in the limiting case where the optimizer is completely broken because it's not implemented yet, we get to work around that too. Optionally…”

Larry Wall

[20031217195433.GB31020@wall.org, 2003]
Usenet postings, 2003

Optimism

“tt>signal(i, SIG_DFL); /* crunch, crunch, crunch */</tt”

Larry Wall

doarg.c.
Source code, Other files

“No prisoner's dilemma here. Over the long term, symbiosis is more useful than parasitism. More fun, too. Ask any mitochondria.”

Larry Wall

[199705102042.NAA00851@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

“I don't like this official/unofficial distinction. It sound, er, officious.”

Larry Wall

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

“tt>echo 'Your stdio isn't very std.'</tt”

Larry Wall

Source code, <code>Configure</code>

“Portability should be the default.”

Larry Wall

[199711072201.OAA01123@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

“It's hard to tune heavily tuned code.”

Larry Wall

[199801141725.JAA07555@wall.org, 1998]
Usenet postings, 1998

“That being said, I think we should immediately deprecate any string concatenation that combines '19' with '99.”

Larry Wall

[199811242002.MAA26850@wall.org, 1998]
Usenet postings, 1998

Thinking

“They can always run stderr through uniq.”

Larry Wall

[199704012331.PAA16535@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

“Yes, we have consensus that we need 64 bit support.”

Larry Wall

[199710291922.LAA07101@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

Support

“If you write something wrong enough, I'll be glad to make up a new witticism just for you.”

Larry Wall

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

“Of course, I reserve the right to make wholly stupid changes to Perl if I think they improve the language.”

Larry Wall

[199704251604.JAA27300@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

Stupidity , Thinking , Change

“Besides, REAL computers have a rename() system call.”

Larry Wall

[7937@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV, 1990]
Usenet postings, 1990

“As usual, I'm overstating the case to knock a few neurons loose, but the truth is usually somewhere in the muddle, uh, middle.”

Larry Wall

[199702111639.IAA28425@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

Truth

“But you have to allow a little for the desire to evangelize when you think you have good news.”

Larry Wall

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

Thinking

“Well, you know, Hubbard had a bunch of people sworn to commit suicide when he died. So of course he never officially died…”

Larry Wall

[199804141540.IAA05247@wall.org, 1998]
Usenet postings, 1998

People , Suicide

“The only reason I've managed to run this open source project, is that I have learned to delegate even the delegation to other people.”

Larry Wall

final words of the video
Public Talks, Larry Wall Speaks at Google (2008)

People , Learning

“I was about to say, 'Avoid fame like the plague,' but you know, they can cure the plague with penicillin these days.”

Larry Wall

[199709242015.NAA10312@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

“Any false value is gonna be fairly boring in Perl, mathematicians notwithstanding.”

Larry Wall

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

Falseness

“Randal can write one-liners again. Everyone is happy, and peace spreads over the whole Earth.”

Larry Wall

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

Peace , Happiness

“But you could do extreme programming. In fact, I had a college buddy I did pair programming with. We took a compiler writing class together and studied all that fancy stuff from the dragon book. Then of course the professor announced we would be implementing our own language, called PL/0. After thinking about it a while, we announced that we were going to do our project in BASIC. The professor looked at us like we were insane. Nobody else in the class was using BASIC. And you know what? Nobody else in the class finished their compiler either. We not only finished but added I/O extensions, and called it PL 0.5. That's rapid prototyping.”

Larry Wall

Public Talks, The State of the Onion 11

Books , Thinking , Study

“tt>if (instr(buf, sys_errlist[ errno])) /* you don't see this */</tt”

Larry Wall

eval.c.
Source code, Other files

“Piet van Oostrum: I find this a nice feature but it is not according to the documentation. Or is it a BUG?
Larry Wall: Let's call it an accidental feature.”

Larry Wall

[6909@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV, 1990]
Usenet postings, 1990

“You don't have to wait--you can have it in 5.004_54 or so.”

Larry Wall

[199710221740.KAA24455@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

Waiting

“Not that I'm against sneaking some notions into people's heads upon occasion. (Or blasting them in outright.)”

Larry Wall

Usenet postings, 1997

People

“> (It's sorta like sed, but not. It's sorta like awk, but not. etc.)Guilty as charged. Perl is happily ugly, and happily derivative.”

Larry Wall

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

“Oh, get ahold of yourself. Nobody's proposing that we parse English.”

Larry Wall

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

“How do you type it? With your keyboard.”

Larry Wall

Public Talks, "Present Continuous - Future Perfect"

“Well, hey, let's just make everything into a closure, and then we'll have our general garbage collector, installed by 'use less memory.”

Larry Wall

[199710221744.KAA24484@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

Memory

“If you want to program in C, program in C. It's a nice language. I use it occasionally…”

Larry Wall

[7577@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV, 1990]
Usenet postings, 1990

“It's, uh, pseudo code. Yeah, that's the ticket…[…]And 'unicode' is pseudo code for $encoding.”

Larry Wall

[199808071717.KAA12628@wall.org, 1998]
Usenet postings, 1998

“Anyway, my money is still on use strict vars...”

Larry Wall

[199710011704.KAA21395@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

Money

“I note that the Python folks still think they like JPython. I wonder how long that will last?”

Larry Wall

[199808050009.RAA22631@wall.org, 1998]
Usenet postings, 1998

Thinking

“Magically turning people's old scalar contexts into list contexts is a recipe for several kinds of disaster.”

Larry Wall

[199709291631.JAA08648@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

People

“And besides, if Perl really takes off in the Windows space, I think the rest of us would just as soon have a double-agent within ActiveState.”

Larry Wall

[199807172334.QAA18255@wall.org, 1998]
Usenet postings, 1998

Thinking

“Perl did not get where it is by ignoring psychological factors.”

Larry Wall

[199809031634.JAA26895@wall.org, 1998]
Usenet postings, 1998

“If you want to see useful Perl examples, we can certainly arrange to have comp. lang. misc flooded with them, but I don't think that would help the advance of civilization.”

Larry Wall

[1992Mar5.180926.19041@netlabs.com, 1992]
Usenet postings, 1992

Thinking , Help

“Let us be charitable, and call it a misleading feature”

Larry Wall

[2609@jato.Jpl.Nasa.Gov, 1990]
Usenet postings, 1990

“I think that's easier to read. Pardon me. Less difficult to read.”

Larry Wall

[199710120226.TAA06867@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

Thinking , Reading

“Well, you can implement a Perl peek() with unpack('P',..). Once you have that, there's only security through obscurity.”

Larry Wall

[199710161537.IAA07828@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

“A 'goto' in Perl falls into the category of hard things that should be possible, not easy things that should be easy.”

Larry Wall

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

“Suppose you went back to Ada Lovelace and asked her the difference between a script and a program. She'd probably look at you funny, then say something like: Well, a script is what you give the actors, but a program is what you give the audience. That Ada was one sharp lady…”

Larry Wall

Public Talks, The State of the Onion 11

“For the sake of argument I'll ignore all your fighting words.”

Larry Wall

[199710221710.KAA24242@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

Fight

“It is, of course, written in Perl. Translation to C is left as an exercise for the reader.”

Larry Wall

[7448@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV, 1990]
Usenet postings, 1990

Exercises

“Sometimes we choose the generalization. Sometimes we don't.”

Larry Wall

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

“You want it in one line? Does it have to fit in 80 columns?”

Larry Wall

[7349@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV, 1990]
Usenet postings, 1990

“But I'm not here to talk about postmodernism. I tried to do that last spring, and afterwards I was thoroughly deconstructed by the deconstructionists for attempting to deconstruct deconstructionism. At least, that's the construction I put on their construction of it. I was talking about postmodern culture, and they thought I was talking about postmodern literature. Not at all the same thing!”

Larry Wall

Public Talks, "3rd State of the Onion"

Spring , Literature