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About this quote

What does it mean?
Flooding a forum with Perl examples wouldn't advance civilization.
In plain terms
Posting many Perl examples online wouldn't help humanity.
What can you take from it?
Focus on quality and impact rather than sheer volume of examples.

Where it applies

  • online communities
  • education

Putting it to work

  • curate high‑value examples
  • target useful audiences

Questions to consider

  • What makes an example valuable?
  • How to measure impact of shared code?

Another view

Some niche communities may still benefit from abundant examples.

More from Larry Wall

  1. > (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.

    Permalink to quote #51
  2. If I don't document something, it's usually either for a good reason, or a bad reason. In this case it's a good reason. :-)

    Permalink to quote #49
  3. Just don't compare it with a real language, or you'll be unhappy... :-)

    Permalink to quote #52

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