25 Larry Wall Quotes on Language

Larry Wall quotes on language

32. If I allowed 'next $label' then I'd also have to allow 'goto $label', and I don't think you really want that... :-)

52. Just don't compare it with a real language, or you'll be unhappy... :-)

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

61. 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.

62. Lisp has all the visual appeal of oatmeal with fingernail clippings mixed in.

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

68. Odd that we think definitions are definitive. :-)

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

72. So far we've managed to avoid turning Perl into APL. :-)

86. P.S. Perl's master plan (or what passes for one) is to take over the world like English did. Er, *as* English did...

92. We didn't put in ^^ because then we'd have to keep telling people what it means, and then we'd have to keep telling them why it doesn't short circuit. :-/

96. Personally, I like to defiantly split my infinitives. :-)

101. The random quantum fluctuations of my brain are historical accidents that happen to have decided that the concepts of dynamic scoping and lexical scoping are orthogonal and should remain that way.

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

144. That should probably be written: no !@#$%^&*:@!semicolon

149. (To the extent that anyone but a Prolog programmer can understand X totally. (And to the extent that a Prolog programmer can understand 'cut'. :-))

167. Perhaps they will have to outlaw sending random lists of words. fee fie foe foo

190. I'm reminded of the day my daughter came in, looked over my shoulder at some Perl 4 code, and said, 'What is that, swearing?

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

215. If this were Ada, we'd simply doc it as 'erroneous'.

218. In Clintonese, that would be 'You are free to infer that I was saying that.' :-)

219. Would you trust the linguistic intuitions of someone who has been studying Latin or Greek for three days?

284. There are a lotta computer languages out there doing drugs.

290. There's really no way to fix this and still keep Perl pathologically eclectic.

291. :I also discovered Larry's First Law of Language Redesign: Everyone wants the colon.