Larry Wall: Quotes about thinking (page 2)

Larry Wall is American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl. Explore interesting quotes on thinking.
Larry Wall: 588   quotes 2   likes

“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

“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

“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

“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

“If I allowed 'next $label' then I'd also have to allow 'goto $label', and I don't think you really want that…”

Larry Wall

[1991Mar11.230002.27271@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov, 1991]
Usenet postings, 1991

Thinking

“In general, if you think something isn't in Perl, try it out, because it usually is.”

Larry Wall

[1991Jul31.174523.9447@netlabs.com, 1991]
Usenet postings, 1991

Thinking

“Well, I think Perl should run faster than C.”

Larry Wall

[199801200306.TAA11638@wall.org, 1998]
Usenet postings, 1998

Thinking

“It's getting harder and harder to think out loud. One of these days someone's gonna go off and kill Thomas a'Becket for me…”

Larry Wall

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

Thinking

“I hope I'm not getting so famous that I can't think out load [ sic] anymore.”

Larry Wall

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

Hope , Thinking

“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

“I'm serious about thinking through all the possibilities before we settle on anything. All things have the advantages of their disadvantages, and vice versa.”

Larry Wall

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

Thinking

“You can't have filenames longer than 14 chars. You can't even think about them!”

Larry Wall

Source code, <code>Configure</code>

Thinking

“As a linguist, I don't think of Ada as a big language. Now, English and Japanese, those are big languages. Ada is just a medium-sized language.”

Larry Wall

Public Talks, The State of the Onion 11

Thinking

“Now, I'm not the only language designer with irrationalities. You can think of some languages to go with some of these things.”

Larry Wall

"We've got to start over from scratch" - Well, that's almost any academic language you find.
"English phrases" - Well, that's Cobol. You know, cargo cult English. (laughter)
"Text processing doesn't matter much" - Fortran.
"Simple languages produce simple solutions" - C.
"If I wanted it fast, I'd write it in C" - That's almost a direct quote from the original awk page.
"I thought of a way to do it so it must be right" - That's obviously PHP. (laughter and applause)
"You can build anything with NAND gates" - Any language designed by an electrical engineer. (laughter)
"This is a very high level language, who cares about bits?" - The entire scope of fourth generation languages fell into this... problem.
"Users care about elegance" - A lot of languages from Europe tend to fall into this. You know, Eiffel.
"The specification is good enough" - Ada.
"Abstraction equals usability" - Scheme. Things like that.
"The common kernel should be as small as possible" - Forth.
"Let's make this easy for the computer" - Lisp. (laughter)
"Most programs are designed top-down" - Pascal. (laughter)
"Everything is a vector" - APL.
"Everything is an object" - Smalltalk and its children. (whispered:) Ruby. (laughter)
"Everything is a hypothesis" - Prolog. (laughter)
"Everything is a function" - Haskell. (laughter)
"Programmers should never have been given free will" - Obviously, Python. (laughter).
Public Talks, "Present Continuous - Future Perfect"

Thinking

“People understand instinctively that the best way for computer programs to communicate with each other is for each of the them to be strict in what they emit, and liberal in what they accept. The odd thing is that people themselves are not willing to be strict in how they speak, and liberal in how they listen. You'd think that would also be obvious. Instead, we're taught to express ourselves.”

Larry Wall

Public Talks, "2nd State of the Onion"

People , Way , Communication , Understanding

“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.”

Larry Wall

It just takes some people longer than others. :-
[199809230518.WAA19312@wall.org, 1998]
Usenet postings, 1998

Thinking , People , Learning