Larry Wall: Likeness

“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

“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

Thinking

“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

“… 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

People , Communication , Cooking

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

Larry Wall

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

“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

“I think $[ is more like a coelacanth than a mastadon.”

Larry Wall

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

Thinking

“I don't like your I-can-use-anything-as-an-adjective attitude.”

Larry Wall

[1994Nov12.013919.21133@netlabs.com, 1994]
Usenet postings, 1994

“There are many times when you want it to ignore the rest of the string just like atof() does. Oddly enough, Perl calls atof(). How convenient.”

Larry Wall

[1991Jun24.231628.14446@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov, 1991]
Usenet postings, 1991

Time

“Unix is like a toll road on which you have to stop every 50 feet to pay another nickel. But hey! You only feel 5 cents poorer each time.”

Larry Wall

[1992Aug13.192357.15731@netlabs.com, 1992]
Usenet postings, 1992

Feeling , Time

“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

“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

People , Thinking , Learning

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

Larry Wall

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

“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

“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

“> (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

“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

“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

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

Larry Wall

Usenet postings, 1992