Larry Wall: Doing

“There are a lotta computer languages out there doing drugs.”

Larry Wall

Public Talks, The State of the Onion 10

“Perl itself is usually pretty good about telling you what you shouldn't do.”

Larry Wall

[11091@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV, 1991]
Usenet postings, 1991

“One thing I do understand is that people get scared when I start thinking out loud.”

Larry Wall

[20031212010945.GB29594@wall.org, 2003]
Usenet postings, 2003

People , Understanding , Thinking

“tt>break; /* don't do magic till later */</tt”

Larry Wall

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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

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

Larry Wall

In the perl man page.
Documentation

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

Larry Wall

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

Hope , Error

“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

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

Larry Wall

Public Talks, "Present Continuous - Future Perfect"

“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

“And I don't like doing silly things (except on purpose).”

Larry Wall

Usenet postings, 1992

“Doing linear scans over an associative array is like trying to club someone to death with a loaded Uzi.”

Larry Wall

[1992Sep21.214659.22849@netlabs.com, 1992]
Usenet postings, 1992

Death

“There are still some other things to do, so don't think if I didn't fix your favorite bug that your bug report is in the bit bucket. (It may be, but don't think it.”

Larry Wall

[7238@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV, 1990]
Usenet postings, 1990

Thinking

“How do Crays and Alphas handle the POSIX problem?”

Larry Wall

[199709050042.RAA29379@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

Problem